Menagerie
by GraphiteHeron
Summary: For the kmeme. Quentin had a partner back in the day, who comes into town just in time to see his old friend gutted by Hawke. Enraged, he chooses one of Hawke's friends to experiment on for revenge. Prompt: Anders gets wings. Eventual Fenders.
1. Stepping Stones

Menagerie: Prologue – _Stepping Stones_

_Victory_. Hawke and his companions make it out of the Deep Roads alive and richer for it, despite Bartrand's betrayal. Maybe Garrett has lost his brother Carver to the will of the Templars, but Carver is alive and well and Garrett knows that at least the Gallows has a Templar the mages can trust. Carver gets to be his own man, and the mages have someone to protect them. Garrett can move their mother into the ancestral estate, and Leandra is happy like a little girl again, finally home, despite everything she's lost to get here.

_Peace._ Despite their general misgivings about each other's beliefs, Anders and Fenris have given their arguing a rest. They still debate, true, but they debate like intellectuals instead of enemies. The air between them is civil, nearly polite. None of their comrades understands this. Perhaps that's the point.

_Conflict._ There will be war with the Qunari, whether the large, horned people and their smaller fellows in faith will it or not. The religious extremist factions of the city will not tolerate competition, and with their fierce certainty about the world and their place in it, those of the Qun are the strongest competition the Chantry has seen in years.

_Vengeance._ The slavers finally pounce on Fenris. An apprentice magister tells the murderously angry warrior exactly where to find one of his former tormentors. Fenris promises Hadriana mercy when she surrenders, but the past's hurts are too much. His hand phases through her chest and rips out her heart seemingly of its own accord. He does not talk to anyone for three days.

_Love._ It takes subtle prodding from Hawke, and Fenris, and Anders, and finally some not-so-subtle prodding, but Aveline and Guardsman Donnic are finally lovers. And happy. Maker knows, someone in their mismatched menagerie of miserable mopes and pathological liars needs a stable, normal, happy relationship.

_Betrayal._ Despite going through Keeper Marethari's trials to acquire the _Arulin'holm_, Garrett does not give the tool to Merrill. The hurt that blooms in her wide green eyes is as tangible as a knife to Hawke's heart. She trusted him, and he betrayed her. Never mind that he's certain it's for her own good.

_Scars._ It's a stormy night, dark, the kind story writers everywhere like to cliché when Anders wanders up to Hightown in the rain because he's desperate to talk to someone who understands what it's like to have skin that hurts when the weather changes. He ends up on Fenris' doorstep. They talk, Anders tells stories about where some of his scars come from, and it is ironically Fenris who reminds him he does not need to fear his own skin. Afterwards, they maintain their civility, but neither speaks of that night for some time.

_Awe_. The Hero of Ferelden wanders into the Hanged Man one night. Anders is at first panicked that Cousland is there to drag him back. Cousland whacks some sense into his head, actually beats Isabela at Wicked Grace, and wistfully tells Hawke how much Leandra reminds him of his own mother. Then he blows out of their lives like an overnight storm, leaving them enough stories of the good old days to mourn Anders and Justice as they had been before becoming AndersandJustice.

_Grief._ Garrett panics when Gamlen tells him that Leandra is missing and the only sign of her is a bouquet of white lilies. Funeral flowers. The mark of the serial killer that has been plaguing Kirkwall and who now has Hawke's mother. It's too late to save her when they find her. All Garrett can do is kill the blood mage – Quentin – and put on a brave face for the stitched-together monstrosity that is Leandra's head with another woman's eyes stuck on a body that is another woman's hands, another's skin… Leandra's blood, black ichor, not completely her own, is still wet on Hawke's clothing when he is called out to rescue Seamus Dumar, the Viscount's son. Seamus is dead too, in the Chantry, one of the last voices of reason in Kirkwall, throat slit while Hawke was screaming over his mother's mangled corpse. Petrice is shot dead by a Qunari archer, but Seamus and Leandra are both dead. The first thing that happens when he gets home is his uncle Gamlen – never reasonable, less so in grief – snarling at him that it's all Garrett's fault that Leandra is dead and that all mages, Garrett included, should burn in the Void for it.

**Author's Note: Sorry for re-loading the prologue, but the author note was missing the first time and I shouldn't type when I'm tired because _I actually spelled 'panics' with a sodding k_. Panicks. And no~body called me on it. Here I thought I was posting here instead of the kinkmeme so that my computer could spellcheck me. Anyway. My dipshit-ness aside, I had meant to explain that this may be slow to update. I'm an unemployed shmuck looking for a job. Also, I clearly need to spend more time editing. That, and I promise that following chapters will not be in 'stepping stone' style. They'll be actual chapters, with plot and everything.**

**Again, sorry to everyone who has this on alert (and there are an awful lot of you - where'd all y'all come from? I've never had a story this popular before [because most of the stuff I put on this site wasn't worth writing, forget reading]). I just needed to warn you that this will be updated slowly and irregularly and I _had_ to Grammar Nazi myself on that spelling error.**


	2. Shadows of the Past

Menagerie: Chapter One – Shadows of the Past

It has been many long, lonesome years since Quentin went his own way. It was a long and fruitful partnership, rife with intellectual discoveries that would have shaped the world, if not for the Chantry's suffocating influence controlling the minds of the populace at large. If not for the virtual enslavement of the world to the Chantry's misinformed _tripe_ about magic, they could have gone far.

Sadly, Quentin lost his taste for their work when his wife passed on. Said he needed time. To heal, to consider his options. To mourn her loss. Markelius understood. He had needed time himself. Quentin's wife had been a friend.

Markelius retreated back to his native Tevinter, jealously hoarding his work, Quentin's work, from greedy magisters who would take it from him by force if they ever cottoned on to what he was doing and how monumental it could be if it ever came to light. Markelius continued his research alone, missing Quentin's sharp mind and passion for the scientific discovery.

Before the death of his wife, Quentin had veritably _burned_ with a nova-aura of knowledge-lust and aching scholarly greed, voraciously devouring information put before him and constantly seeking new ideas. If but half of the magisters of the Imperium had but half of Quentin's scholastic zeal, Tevinter would rise again as a bastion of scientific research and discovery, instead of languishing as a pit of decadence and corruption.

Markelius kept himself out of the politics of Tevinter for that very reason. For one, hob-nobbing with the actual magisters would have consumed time better spent researching. They liked to consider themselves social creatures, magisters, but Markelius was convinced that the constant parties and galas were to maintain surveillance on rivals and make sure they were doing nothing productive. For another thing, becoming a full magister would have required him to share his findings. Not on his life. He would not dishonor his partnership with Quentin by just giving up everything they had worked for together.

Instead, he kept to himself and his family. Apart from his research into the betterment of the human condition, he had time for his wife, and eventually, their daughter. Aurelia. Dear, sweet Aurelia. She was born perfect, and also unfortunately perfectly blind. Markelius redoubled his commitment to his research when he discovered that.

Eventually, Markelius received a letter from his old partner.

_Markelius, old friend!_

_I have done it! I have discovered a way to snatch my beloved back from the Maker Himself! I need but a few more components and I shall have her back by my side. I would be honored if you would come share in my triumph, my friend. Have you still been working on our old projects? Perhaps you could share your newest findings with me when you arrive. If you need somewhere to work, I'm certain the old slaver warrens throughout Sundermount and the Wounded Coast are more than adequately spaced and equipped. Just think, you and me, partners once again! And my beloved shall be with us again. I'm sure you remember how vital her support and intelligence was to our cause before._

_I do hope to see you soon, partner._

_~Quentin_

Markelius was not sure what Quentin meant, precisely, about getting his wife back or how he intended to do that. Their experiments and research thus far had centered entirely on the living; Markelius knew no cure for death. Still, the breakthrough sounded interesting and Quentin could probably explain it better in person than in a brief, over-excited note penned in shaking hand.

Unfortunately, his plans to come visit were delayed by new discoveries about his daughter's condition. Aurelia was not only blind, she was mostly deaf. She also suffered a condition that hindered her ability to balance, making it impossible for her to safely learn to walk. She could barely crawl without killing herself.

And then she nearly did. She tried to walk, despite the eternal darkness of her world, and it betrayed her, throwing her down a flight of stairs with her pet cat and disastrously injuring them both.

His wife Daphne hissed at him, "_Fix her!_ You've devoted your life to this for years, damn it, _fix her!_"

"It will change her forever."

"Then change me too. Our baby is _not_ going to die and _not_ going to do this alone."

Utterly terrified of making Aurelia's condition worse but more terrified of losing her, Markelius did as his wife commanded. Aurelia survived. Daphne did not.

Markelius buried his wife in the family crypt, never prouder of her than then. She had sacrificed everything for their child. Aurelia would grow up knowing her mother was a hero. That there was no woman stronger in the world, and that she had given everything for love.

* * *

><p>He packs his research, his equipment, and what is left of his family, and sets off to the parts Quentin's letter mentioned a year after his wife's death. He finds a den, sets up a laboratory. He returns to work after sending Quentin directions on where and how to get messages to him.<p>

One day, another letter. Less a letter, more a note. An announcement.

_One more piece and I will have done it! Come, my friend, help me bring my beloved back into this world!_

The letter is in his hand as he walks the streets of Lowtown, Kirkwall. On the back of the note is a sketchy map of the foundries, a back-entry trap door away from the main entrance – which is trapped, in case someone tries to interrupt Quentin's work. Lowtown is dangerous at best during the shadowy night hours, but the thugs eye Markelius warily. They are not intelligent creatures, thugs, but some are possessed of a crude animal instinct, enough to know when a deadly predator walks amongst them and how not to attract that predator's attention.

The door to the main entrance to Quentin's workshop is inside the foundry buildings. The back is a hidden trapdoor several streets down, partially buried in the ashes that fall like snow from the clouds of smoke. Such a picturesquely bleak place Quentin has chosen to work. It feels somehow appropriate.

The ashes smear themselves all over Markelius' immaculate black-and-grey robes when he lets himself down the trapdoor. He drops several feet into the blackness below, nearly turning an ankle when his feet hit the hard-packed dirt of the floor unexpectedly. Until his eyes adjust enough to the dim black to allow him to navigate without conjuring a light, Markelius takes a moment to appreciate the blindness. This had been his daughter's entire world for the first, most important years of her life.

But his eyes do adjust. Markelius follows the walls of the one-way tunnel, boots scuffing the uneven floor. He can hear sounds ahead, bad sounds, the noise and din of combat. He can taste the demons on the air, feel the brazen stink of undeath rolling through his skin as he gets closer.

Muffled conversation, a man screaming in anguish. By the time Markelius gets close enough to the hidden door that leads into the lab to peek out and see what's wrong, there is only enough time left to hear one last snatch of conversation.

"Come on Hawke, there's nothing else you can do. Let's get out of here."

'Hawke' is a man. Average height but broadly built, muscular. Odd build, for a mage. The man who spoke is a dwarf in a brightly colored silk shirt open to his navel, a leather duster over it, a unique crossbow strapped across his back. There are two other men with Hawke and the dwarf. One is an elf that Markelius vaguely recognizes from Tevinter, or at least, he recognizes the lyrium tattooing as a pet project of a magister who did his level best to make Markelius' existence a living Void.

Danarius nearly managed to crush Markelius, family and all. Markelius had been thinking of a way to pay the bastard back, but losing thousands of sovereigns' worth of lyrium and the only slave strong enough to survive the procedure? Good enough.

The other man is tall, blond, bone structure betraying him as a child of the Anderfels. Flamboyantly dressed – feathered coat, dragon-headed staff and all. Sad, honey-colored eyes that can't seem to focus on anything at the moment.

The four men leave. Markelius sneaks into the workshop to investigate. First he finds the body of a woman. No, not _a_ woman. The skin does not fit the frame, the hands and head have been sewn on, the eyes belong to another woman entirely. This is four, five different women? _Oh Quentin, what have you gotten yourself into? _The face looks achingly familiar. She and Quentin's wife could have been sisters. Old grief stabs him anew, remembering a stalwart friend whose support had meant the world.

Skeleton parts are scattered, fallen guardians that failed their duty. Demon ichor is splashed on tables, on devices of science once kept immaculately cleaned, now fallen into hideous disrepair.

Quentin is behind one of his desks, torn near limb from limb and charred from the inside out. Ice settles in Markelius' gut. This was his best friend, his partner, the man to whom Markelius owed years of his life's most important accomplishments, the man whose research allowed Markelius' daughter to live.

Someone has shoved a fireball down Quentin's throat, dashed his body against the ceiling and the ground. _You will pay for this, Hawke_, speaks the grief screaming desperately in the back of Markelius' soul. _You will pay for this murder. I should kill you for this. No, no. I am not a monster. I will not kill you. But this research could have helped so many people. A life for a life, Hawke. You will pay what you owe by furthering my research. You, or…_

_You destroyed my best friend, Hawke. Perhaps one of your friends should pay your price for you._

* * *

><p>Anders wants desperately to walk up the stairs in Hawke's estate, but sits quietly on a mabari-chewed bench in the foyer instead. He should go up, say something, offer Hawke the shoulder he probably needs to cry on. That's what friends do, right? Except that Anders has never been entirely good at the whole friendship thing.<p>

He can hear Gamlen ranting about the evils of magic upstairs, yelling at Garrett that this is all his fault and that if he were just a better person, maybe this would never have happened.

Fenris, who is sitting next to him, flinches. The elf has gotten vitriolic with Hawke about being a mage before, but never to the point of blaming him like this. Never kicked him when it was Hawke hurting. Anders has to respect that, at least. Fenris only lashes out when he is the one in pain, always careful to try and avoid striking an open wound if he knows it is there to hit.

Gamlen is Garrett's last remaining family, though, discounting Carver in the Gallows. Carver is the other reason Anders hesitates to go up and comfort Hawke. Their last real conversation didn't go well.

"_He's betrayed you, Hawke!"_ Anders had shouted upon learning that Carver had become the thing he and Justice had dedicated themselves to fighting against._ "He's your brother, and he went and became a sodding Templar!"_

"_That's right. He __**is**__my brother, and you've said enough!"_ Garrett had snarled right back._ "He needed to find his own way, and this was the only way he could. I trust him, Anders. Carver might get bitchy sometimes but he holds his honor close. He'll be one of the few Templars in the Gallows that mages can trust not to hurt them. I hope that someday you'll see that."_

The argument had ended there, Garrett storming out of the clinic. He had stopped by alone just one other time, to gift Anders with an amulet that might, in retrospect, actually get him killed. Anders still doesn't know if he simply hasn't known Carver long enough to grasp the concept of the lad placing his honor above his obvious resentment towards anything mage-related, or if Garrett has simply known Carver too long to see the treachery even when it's right in front of him.

Things seems to be working out okay. Anders probably owes both Hawke brothers an apology, but not when Aveline is sending her guards to clean up the mangled remains of Leandra and the other women from the madman's workshop of nightmares. There is a time and a place for everything, and now is neither the time nor the place to bring up that old grievance when this hurt is still new and raw and bleeding.

The door to the estate opens, and Isabela slinks in, hesitant. Varric follows closely behind her. The two rogues take a long look at the despondent souls already there, and both flop onto the bench across from them.

"Can't think of what to say?" Isabela offers, with an uncharacteristically watery smile. It's clear she has about as much experience comforting grieving friends as the rest of them do – a sum total of less than none.

Gamlen is shouting again, louder this time, blaming Garrett for being a mage, blaming his long-dead sister Bethany for being a mage. He has just cycled back to this from yelling at Garrett about dealing with the Qunari problems at the Chantry before coming back to tell him about Leandra's death.

Varric cringes. "Maker's breath, how long has the old bastard been on like that?"

"Since we've been here," Fenris answers, shifting uncomfortably. Gamlen is now blaming mages for things even Fenris couldn't, or wouldn't.

"He's been going in circles," Anders adds. "Hawke wasn't good enough to save Leandra, or he didn't work hard enough, mages are evil and it's all his fault he is one, how dare he go on an errand for the Viscount without informing Gamlen of what happened to Leandra, and repeat. I'd go up, but we haven't been on the best speaking terms lately."

Fenris winces again. "As would I, except that I doubt my comfort is wanted."

"Yeah, Broody, the anti-mage attitude tends to be a bit rough, and I'm not even the one who should be complaining." Varric huffs a sigh, growling under his breath. "You lot can go. I'll talk to Hawke. If you want, I'll give him your condolences, but now's really not the time for magic is evil, or mage rights, or lewd commentary." The dwarf gives them each a pointed stare in turn.

"Varric, I'm hurt," Isabela puts a hand over her heart, pouting at the dwarf in a shaky mockery of her usual nonchalance. "That you'd think even I could make that kind of talk now of all times. What kind of tramp do you take me for?"

"To be fair, Fenris hasn't said word one about magic being evil since the Hadriana incident," Anders interjects, feeling strangely obligated to step up and defend the elf's honor. "Regardless, point taken. Thanks, Varric."

Anders _is_ grateful, let there be no doubt about that. Let the master of words handle the wordy parts. Anders will stay out of the way and try not to make things worse by saying the wrong thing. His sentiments are echoed exactly across the other faces in the foyer.

Isabela claps Varric on the shoulder and leaves first, not even waiting for the riposte to her barb. This isn't the time for casual revelry, and no matter what most people have to say about Isabela, even she has boundaries she honors. When the time comes that Hawke's ready for her brand of comfort – which for this situation will likely be casks of rum and possibly a few bottles of whisky – she'll do everything she knows how to take his mind off of the pain, and then off of everything. Until then, there's nothing she can do.

Fenris nods deeply, which might be a shallow bow where he's from, and follows suit. Anders scrambles after him. Dawn is breaking when they leave the old Amell estate. Fenris cuts across the Chantry courtyard toward his borrowed mansion. Anders is a tall, awkwardly feathered shadow at his shoulder.

They don't talk about That Night. Or rather, they do, but not all of it. There is a common understanding still between them, though they try to pretend it stops there. Anders follows Fenris inside of the mansion, like he does most times they talk, and still can't repress the shiver of memory when he looks over at the upstairs fireplace.

There's a bench by the fireplace now. The furniture always seems to be moving in Fenris' borrowed/stolen mansion, and yet it's never the elf himself doing the moving. Always Hawke, or Varric, or Aveline. Merrill, once, when it was discovered that Fenris had no chairs and an elven carpenter in the Alienage had a sick daughter. The carpenter had felt obligated to pay, despite Anders' assurances to the contrary, and Merrill had suggested chairs.

Sometimes the Dalish girl can be infuriatingly practical, despite refusing to believe that maybe a pride demon is too much for her to handle safely.

Fenris parks himself on the bench, picking up a bottle of wine that has apparently been politely waiting for him. He doesn't offer to share, even when Anders sits beside him. That works fine. Justice doesn't allow Anders to indulge in alcohol anyway.

Anders wants to be cranky with Justice about that. He misses being able to drink himself blind and let go of his troubles for just a little while. Then again, Justice has seen Anders drunk before. He'd drunk Oghren under the table more than once, and he hadn't acted any smarter for it at the time. Justice's enforced sobriety is probably a good thing, all things considered. Anders is a fairly _stupid_ drunk. And reckless. But still, it would be very nice to take the edge off of the grief right now.

Leandra is gone.

She'd involved herself in the lives of all of her sons' companions. Insisted that Fenris and Anders didn't eat enough, listened avidly to Varric's wild stories, to Isabela's tales of the high seas. She'd treated Aveline as a surrogate daughter, Merrill as a potential daughter-in-law – mother's intuition told her Carver had a crush, and she'd hoped that would work out regardless of Merrill's identity as a mage and as an elf.

Leandra is dead.

Leandra, who'd had some stories of her own to tell about a wild youth with a mercenary apostate she'd eloped with, a mercenary apostate who'd had Isabela's charm and Anders' knack for mending wounds, and they reminded her so much of Malcolm in their own ways.

Leandra Amell-Hawke is dead and she is only one person in an ocean of death spanning just the last two days. Seamus Dumar is dead, throat slit by a Revered Mother at the feet of the opulent golden statue of the Maker in the heart of the Chantry itself. Mother Petrice, also dead, because the Qunari look after their own – and if protection fails, they avenge. Before Seamus, three Qunari peace-negotiators and three dozen untrained peasants in the thrall of Petrice's pet templar's religious fanaticism. The Templar, also. Oh, and hadn't Petrice also sent a further two dozen misled peasants to die when she accused Hawke of Seamus' murder? Yes, yes she had.

Two days. Sixty-seven deaths, sixty-eight if the madman who murdered Leandra is to be tallied also. Two days. Justice seems to believe there was some fairness in all of it, that those who perpetrated injustices fell prey to their own evil, in a way.

The healer in Anders can't stand it. Good people, bad people, sixty-eight people in two days, and that's just where Hawke and assorted company – Anders included – have been personally involved. It's beginning to numb his soul. That's bad. He wants to feel, _needs _to feel, even the pain, especially the pain, because the feelings and the pain are what make him alive. Alive, not dead. Alive, not Tranquil. Anders curls up sideways on the bench, head resting on Fenris' thigh, nose resting against the elf's abdomen, just beneath the plated part of that very strange armor he favors.

"Anders…"

"I'm not asking much, Fenris. I just," Anders falters, takes a breath, composes himself, "I need _some_ kind of living contact." He rolls his head back to look up at Fenris. "Andraste's flaming knickers, I've never felt so shaky asking for a _hug_ before."

Something softens in Fenris' jade eyes, and he sets the wine bottle aside after one last pull from it. He scoots closer, pulling Anders up into an awkward embrace. The mage is pressed uncomfortably into the chest-plate of Fenris' armor, but his head is tucked neatly under the elf's chin and that is what he was asking for. The articulated gauntlets Fenris is hardly ever without dig into Anders' back a little bit, but Fenris is careful not to rip anything.

"The past few days have been trying," Fenris says. It might be an agreement. It might be his justification for needing the contact just as badly. Leandra made herself a friend to both of them, and now she's gone forever.

Anders shifts, trying to ease the aching of his spine. "I've counted sixty-eight people, Fenris. _Sixty-eight_ that we've killed in the last two days, or seen killed, or been unable to save, and Maker's blood, this comforting thing would be so much easier if you were the one who needed to be held!"

"W-what?"

"The height difference is killing me, here."

Anders would like to laugh at the absurdity of reality infringing on his grief, but now is not the time for laughter. Awkwardly taller than Fenris, curled into the elf to compensate for this height difference, Anders' spine is beginning to burn beyond his tolerance of such discomfort.

The alternative is Fenris letting go of him, and given that, Anders can put up with an aching spine. The alternative to the freedom of living in Darktown and tending to the endless sick and injured of Kirkwall is the Gallows, and this too is an unacceptable trade. He'll live in Darktown and like it. He'll enjoy the burning cramp in his spine. Because however bad one seems, there is always something worse. He needs freedom, and he needs to be held, and nearly anything is worth these two basic needs.

"Anders…"

"Never mind. Just don't let go?"

Anders is only 'Anders' in private. In front of the rest of their companions, he's still 'Mage'. And Merrill is still 'Witch', Varric is still 'Dwarf', Isabela is still 'Wench', and Garrett is still 'Hawke'. It's a little gratifying to know that he is the only one with a name in Fenris' repertoire of pointing-out-the-obvious labels. Not gratifying enough to soothe the break in his heart, especially not when he remembers that Anders isn't his name, but he gets more from Fenris than anyone else.

For now, it's enough.

**Author's Ramble: Sorry this took so long. I've had to back-edit so many times, though. I still don't think I caught everything, but I think my tensing is at least as consistent as I need it to be (barring a bit of back-story fill-in at the beginning). So. We all know Quentin's a sick, evil fuck. He's also one of the saddest villains in DA2. So, I wanted to focus for just a little bit on why I like him as a villain, and introduce my own villain while I'm at it. I hope Markelius comes across alright. Point is, I want all y'all thinking real hard about what you call 'good' and what you call 'evil'. Markelius isn't here just to torture people. He has a purpose. And maybe, in time, he'll even have sympathizers (I hope).**

**And…is it bad to be proud of a small scrap of my own writing? I swear, "brazen stink of undeath"? I may have to plagiarize myself after that. Or maybe that's just my insomnia making me a little absurd, but I liked that paragraph…Ahem. Author done rambling now. Again, sorry for slow updating but I'm trying to give this prompt a quality fill.**

**Also – yes, I said I was done rambling; I'm a filthy liar – much of the private scenes with Fenris and Anders date back to a little thing I did on the kinkmeme, entitled "A Dark and Stormy Night" if anyone stopping by has read it. Or is interested. It's not my best writing, more insomniac rambling than anything (when is my fanfiction ever not?) but it does inform a lot of their little history.**

**Okay, now I'm done rambling. See y'all next chapter, aye? ;)**


	3. Voices in the Dark

Menagerie: Chapter Two – Voices in the Dark

The slight lull after Leandra's death is only the eye of the storm. They emerge now on the other side of the spiraling eye, and the world burns.

The Viscount's son was killed by a Revered Mother of the Chantry for converting to the Qun. This is the truth, but not one accepted by the faithful populace of Kirkwall. They choose to believe that Seamus Dumar abandoned the Qun for the Chant of Light, and that the Qunari slit his throat because the _kossith_ are vicious, brutal, merciless creatures only just smart enough not to eat their own children – at least half of the time.

There are riots in the streets, citizens of Kirkwall whipped into a mindless, ravening frenzy by the extremist factions of the Chantry, and those who would call themselves _viddathari_ react just as violently to protect the horned visitors to the city and their simple, beautiful, _certain_ faith in their philosophy.

No one pays attention to Darktown. They never have, but the neglect is more pronounced with the world topside burning to the ground. Anders does his customary head-count every night, and each night comes up shorter. Sometimes he finds the bodies of his Undercity charges, killed by gang violence or the ever-present Chokedamp.

Mostly, now, they're just disappearing.

One-Eyed Eddan, who lost the aforementioned eye, plus both his feet and one of his hands in a mining accident – gone. Miserable Marta, whose jaw is so deformed she can barely eat, on the rare occasion she can find and keep food in the Undercity where there is no food and what food there is, most people are keen to steal – gone. Rags, the thirteen-year-old pick-pocket who is blind, mute, and desperate to survive in a world he cannot see and that cannot hear him – gone. Others – gone.

Anders tried to discreetly talk to one of the city guard, and when he was rebuffed, he brought it up with Aveline at the Hanged Man. Not only did no one bother to notice he was concerned about something irrelevant to mage rights, Aveline also told him the same thing the guardsman had.

"_It's the Undercity. People die all the time."_

The healer is not convinced. He damn well knows people die frequently – he lives here, he works with these people daily. No one who lives in _Hightown_ has any right to tell him that people just die here. They'll earn that privilege when they live in the dark right alongside him, caring for the eternal ills of the people here. He knows people die in Darktown. But people who die in Darktown leave corpses in Darktown.

Eddan, Marta, Rags, all the others, not a single body amongst them left behind. Something is prowling Darktown, snatching up the cripples, the birth-deformed, the misshapen, and the disfiguringly injured.

But no one cares and no one notices and Anders is just so close to questioning his own sanity. But Justice is sure something is happening, something sinister enough to jar his tunnel-vision attention from mage rights and the increasing number of Tranquil in the Gallows.

And anything capable of jarring Justice from his tunnel-vision has to be a grave injustice indeed.

The healer is a little angry with himself. Yes, Leandra's death was horrible. But that was a distraction, a dire distraction, and it may have cost even more lives. Just because the world believes these lives have no intrinsic value does not mean that the world is correct.

The world, after all, believes in locking mages up like sub-sentient fungi at best, as hated prisoners in a deathtrap toy box at worst – sometimes worse than that, depending on the commanding knight of the Order in any given jurisdiction. The world also believes in the correctness of slavery in a thousand different forms.

The world is not correct most times. Now, less than ever.

**We are being watched.**

_Thank you for pointing out the obvious._

**This…**_**thing**_** has been watching us since the death of the maleficar. It also watches the others. Be on your guard.**

_What was that I said about pointing out the obvious? I'm not helpless, Justice. Even without you, I managed fairly well._

**No, you did not.** Memories flash behind Anders' eyelids, all of them his own, his worst. The magic-eating chains and the beatings and the torture at the hands of the more lyrium-crazed of the Templars when the Knight Commander wasn't looking. He'd thought he'd put this all behind him, but Justice is in his bones now. Justice is re-living these memories constantly, day in, day out. Is it any wonder the spirit is being driven a little crazy?

Anders feels the prickle of eyes crawling up his spine and looks around outside his clinic, seeing no one but the usual refugees and native Kirkwall-doomed. A deep mushroom grows nearby, cheerfully oblivious to the drear of its surroundings. Light filters in the 'windows' along the cliff-side edge of Darktown, making dust motes dance and the shadows shimmer.

Is it sad that the dirt in the air is the cleanest part of Darktown?

**That is an inane and irrelevant train of thought. You should be locating your pursuer.**

So it's one of _those_ days, is it? Justice is particularly stodgy and infuriating on days like this. Then again, he's thinking in the second-person _you_ instead of the first-person-plural _we_, which means that today, Justice is feeling like Justice and Anders can be – within a limited capacity, of course – Anders. Sometimes neither of them can escape the first-person-plural, can't tell where one ends and the other begins, and those are the bad days. Those are the days they sit for unending hours scribbling a manifesto that is equal parts impassioned fury and complete nonsense.

There is a little bit of the first-person-plural, of course, which is difficult to avoid when two beings share the same physical space. "We are being watched," may simply be Justice including himself in the tally alongside Hawke, Varric, and Fenris.

Thinking of the elf sends a tingle down Anders' spine that may or may not be completely his own.

**The elf is a distraction. We should distance ourselves.**

And it's back to the first-person-plural. Anders rolls his eyes, leaning in the doorway of his clinic. No one needs him today. Or they haven't appeared yet, if they do. Assistants clatter and clink from within the clinic, organizing things, brewing things, essentially preparing for the next minor apocalypse that lands on the clinic's doorstep.

_Oh, you sodding hypocrite. You say that now that we're more or less alone. How come it's never, "We should distance ourselves," when Fenris is right beside us, hmm? That night, weeks ago, when I ended up wandering up to his mansion, you didn't stop me. We started talking, you didn't stop me. We…we went a lot further than talking, and you didn't stop me then either. No, you sat in the back of my head and purred, you lyrium-fancying pervert. All those conversations since? You still haven't spoken up. And now, all of a sudden, it's, "The elf is a distraction." You miserable, infuriating, miserly, hypocritical – and you're only saying he's a distraction because you like him! I can still feel your desires, you know. You want to lick him! And you accuse me of being distracted…_

**You are ranting. Your diatribe does not help you find your hunter.**

Oh, to be Justice sometimes. The spirit vacillates between stating the blatantly obvious as if it is unknown and completely necessary fact, and ignoring the blatantly obvious when it suits his needs.

Which is a skill that Anders is fairly certain used to belong to _him_, before they became _them_. A skill he's lost, that Justice has absorbed. At the very least, Justice is focus. And absolutely right. The diatribe doesn't help Anders find the watcher in the shadows. The rant is still necessary, though, if only to remind the spirit that Anders is not oblivious to his foibles and quirks. If only to remind Anders that he is still Anders, and that Justice is still Justice, and they're not lost yet.

"Hey boss!"

Anders snaps back to the cold reality that this is Darktown and his assistants are clamoring to keep his clinic ready. He turns to the young woman he's recently 'hired'. Really, she's a volunteer. They all are, but Moira insists on calling him 'boss' anyway.

"Yeah, Moira?"

She grimaces when he says her name. She stalks up to him, all boots and trousers and men's clothing, a grimy hand ruffling short-shorn hair.

"It's, ah, Mark, if you don't mind. I try to tell my friends that I'm not a woman, but they all just pat me on the head and say I'll always be their best girl."

Oh. Anders smiles sheepishly.

"Yeah, Mark?"

_He_ grins, flashing slightly off-white, crooked teeth. "Thanks, boss. We're just about ready, assuming there aren't any more dragons in the Bone Pit. But we need more spindleweed, next time you're out there in the real world. Spindleweed and elfroot honey."

Anders nods. "Thanks for keeping inventory." Mark turns to leave, Anders calls out a last, "And Mark?" The assistant stops walking, looking back. "Be who you are. You need new friends."

Mark laughs and waves over his shoulder, taking a hidden back exit out of the clinic. The clinic is rife with invisible escape routes. For Anders, for his helpers, because if it isn't the Templars after them it's the Carta, or the Coterie, or some other gang of knuckle-dragging thugs intent on making the business of free healing much more dangerous than it needs to be.

Right. Spindleweed and elfroot honey. The former is a powerful curative herb, more helpful with illness than injury. They go through a lot of it in Darktown. The Chokedamp. Spindleweed seems to help.

The honey is to help medicine go down easier. Many of the patients in the clinic are children, physically incapable of swallowing medicine that tastes just _that bad_. Especially lacking the understanding that medicine will make the hurts go away. Honey is a healer's secret weapon. Elfroot honey does the double-duty of improving the palatability as well as increasing the effectiveness of the various tinctures and syrups Anders and his assistants brew to cure children of the long, long list of ugly things out to get them here in the Undercity.

Adults don't often get the same consideration. Adults don't tug at Anders' or Justice's heartstrings in quite the same way.

Justice does in fact have a heart. It isn't in any way comprehensible to the mortal way of thinking, but he does have one. Time was his heart ached for the helpless dead trapped in the wrong part of the Fade, and then for the grieving Warden-widowed. Now it aches for children, mages, and occasionally a bad-tempered elf.

Whatever Justice says about Fenris, the spirit does have a soft spot for the elf. Unfortunately for all involved, Fenris is a singularly frustrating individual, and Justice has no idea how to process frustration in any productive manner. And when Justice gets frustrated, he misinterprets things badly and then overreacts, because the paradigm through which he sees the world is now human and flawed. Very, very flawed. And Justice has only his host's eyes to see with.

Almost.

The spirit seems to retain a little bit of a sixth sense. Not quite eyeballs in the back of Anders' skull, but as close as possible. This sixth sense is how Anders had known to wheel on Hawke with a weapon in hand the first time the other mage had walked into the clinic with his brother and the dwarf and all the big, obvious weapons. This sixth sense is how Anders knows _certainly_ that he's being followed, watched, that it isn't just an overactive imagination and a self-important ego telling him he's _worth_ following.

The foibles of youth. Sometimes Anders misses being vapid. It was a lot of fun, vapidity. Counterproductive at the best of times, but fun. Then again, drinking Oghren under the table had been _fun_ until he'd woken up naked in a pigsty and suffering the worst hangover in the history of hangovers. Sometimes some fun just isn't worth the effort, and it's one of the important and positive things he's learned from Justice over the years.

Justice's extra sense flares again, a slow simmer of blue flame behind Anders' otherwise honey-colored eyes. A flare of recognition. Of penitence and shame and familiarity and hope and-and-and-_and_…

And there's only one person on the face of Thedas who can elicit such a response from Justice. The only man Justice is aware of ever _truly_ betraying, aside from Anders himself.

Cousland.

Anders turns back to his clinic's door to find the Warden Commander standing there. Brahnen hasn't ever looked worse in either Anders' or Justice's memories. Dark hair tangled, shadows so deep under wolf-yellow eyes he could be hiding ogres in them.

"I know you've said you're done with Warden business," Cousland pre-empts, hands held in front of himself in a gesture of surrender. This is bad. Brahnen Cousland never surrenders, never meekly steps across a threshold like he's afraid he isn't welcome.

"You look like shit," Anders replies, and it's a _non sequiter_, but it's absolutely true.

"It's a nice day outside."

"All the good taverns are topside."

"Kirkwall is probably the lousiest city-state in the Free Marches, and _this_ is where all the refugees from Ferelden ran to?"

And not a word of this conversation has connected yet. Ice settles in Anders' gut. He's never seen anyone – especially not his former Commander – so disoriented while sober and ostensibly uninjured. Cousland is drifting, voice dreamy instead of direct. Anders is almost afraid of the moment he stops floating and sinks back to reality. Bad news is coming.

"You came here for a reason."

"I lost a Warden today." Brahnen wanders in, find a rickety stool in the corner of the clinic and perches on it, chainmail clinking and crunching and drowning out the stool's groan of protest. "No. Not today, precisely, and she's still more or less alive. I lost her about twelve days ago. Scouting. We tracked a Disciple across the sea here to the Marches."

Anders settles his hips against an empty cot, long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. His hands rest on the cot, fingertips curling under to dig his nails into the bottom side of the cheap wooden table-bed-thing whose purpose changes with the day. It seems like Cousland has a story to tell. Anders can't predict the length, exactly, but he knows it's going to be tragic. His old friend is hurting. Anders is a healer. There seems to be a natural progression to such things. Anders just cocks his head and listens.

"You remember Princess from the last time I was here? Dwarf-lass, Aeducan?"

Anders remembers painfully. He hasn't met that kind of sense of entitlement or ego-centric self-absorbed narcissism since, and he hopes he never does. However, he has the sinking feeling that to say so would be to speak ill of the effectively-dead. Ander just nods, not saying anything.

"You know, once she started to trust us, her attitude wasn't so bad. She got friendly, even. We might have _been_ friends. She even took a shine to our new mage. The lad from the Gallows. Alain."

So there was a decent dwarven being under the frigid princess after all? Anders never could have guessed on his own. He is, however, grateful that at least one of the mages from the Gallows has been given the opportunity to leave. Alain had been suffering repeated sexual abuses at the hands of a specific Templar, Ser Karras, the master hunter. Alain could scream for help all he wanted to; nobody cared enough to save him. Until Cousland conscripted him to save him from being beheaded or made Tranquil – whichever the Templars decided to do – and Karras had nearly lost his head for trying to interfere with a conscription.

Cousland likes beheading Templars, Anders remembers that much about his former leader.

And if the Aeducan princess was friendly with Alain, well, good. The boy deserves a few friends after the hell he's been through. But they're about to get to the tragic part.

"Well, I sent Aeducan off with Surana and Tabris. Surana and Tabris came back three days later, beat up something fierce. We never saw our Princess again. Not…not like that, at least. It was six days before we could reach the end of the trail, a few more to get close to the camp – you know Disciples, how they camp up instead of just wandering like darkspawn should – and we'd had reports of a broodmother, yes, topside, but when we got there…"

"There were two," Anders finishes, nausea twisting his insides.

"There were two," Cousland agrees. "The first was a Qunari priestess. Her whole honor guard went missing, except for one mortally wounded fellow who made it back to the Arishok here in Kirkwall. I'm guessing she was force-fed her tainted honor guard and raped until she started birthing ogres for them. And Aeducan…I just…I thought I'd never fail anyone as badly as I failed you and Justice, but I did, and worse. You're what the Chantry calls an Abomination, yes, but there's still an Anders and a Justice in there somewhere. Muddled, different, but there. There's no more Princess. She's…gone. Completely gone. And I can't figure out how to kill her."

Ah. Shame. Brahnen sags on the stool, shuffling his booted toes in the packed dirt floor of the clinic, shaking with repressed sobs. A woman under his command has suffered the worst fate any woman ever could, he feels it's his fault, he also feels it's his fault that Anders and Justice are AndersandJustice, and he ran away from a battle.

Technically it can be considered a tactical retreat. He didn't actually _run away_. He was unequipped for the fight he found and retreated to heal, resupply, and prepare properly. He'll be back, attacking that camp again. But after everything else it must feel like he's running like a coward.

**He did not fail us. We failed him.**

_I think he knows that, rationally. But grief isn't rational. He probably feels like if he'd better protected us from Ser Rolan, this wouldn't have happened the way it did._

Instead of platitudes or empty condolences, Anders sighs. "I…know a guy who knows a guy, if you need poisons and grenades. And Hawke would probably love to help you out."

Because there's nothing quite like a good explosion when the grief gets to be too much. And there's nothing like darkspawn for aiming a good explosion at. If not helping Cousland to take his mind off of the recent loss, maybe Hawke will help Anders with one of the investigations plaguing him.

He hasn't forgotten the alarming increase of Tranquil in the Gallows. He's distracted, but he hasn't forgotten.

"Thanks. I think I'll just get my people good and drunk and we'll get back out there after a resupply and we'll do right by Princess, end her. Thanks for listening. I just…"

"You needed to vent."

"Yeah."

Anders smiles gently, despite having no stomach for smiles. "I'm familiar with the feeling."

Of course, the last time he needed to vent he'd ended up talking to Fenris. Misery begs strange company, maybe, because Anders doesn't remember ever being the person anyone ever came to when they just needed to talk.

Cousland leaves. Anders gets back to worrying. His people are disappearing, and there's talk of a Tranquil Solution echoing around the Gallows. Sometimes he wishes he were a character in some greater power's story. The narrator would probably be kind enough not to stack one crisis on top of another on top of another and make them all crash and burn simultaneously.

The nightmarish 'Tranquil Solution'. Vanishing people. The Qunari/Chantry riots. He's going to go to the Hanged Man tonight and make Varric tell a story where everything works out. Maybe Anders will find some inspiration in it. Or maybe it'll just be a nice distraction. Oh, he knows, he knows, no distractions are acceptable when things are quite this dire, but he'd like to not be driven _completely_ mad in the meantime.

Only a few patients occupy his time between Cousland's departure and when everyone else is scheduled to meet up at the Hanged Man for drinks and cards and a desperate grab for normalcy. Anders cleans up after the last, washes up, and puts out the lantern outside his clinic door before locking up.

**Revelry is unacceptable. We are still being hunted.**

_And where is safer than with Hawke and the others? At least there we can talk to them all about it._

Justice grumbles further, about avoiding 'the elf', about correcting the injustice of Tranquility, about aiding their old leader with the Warden business – especially with granting a mercy-kill to the Warden-turned-broodmother, but ultimately acquiesces to a night at the Hanged Man because Anders is right. There, they will be relatively safe from their mystery pursuer and there is where they will find everyone.

Everyone being Hawke, Varric, and Fenris – the other potential prey of their shadowy hunter – and Cousland, who can't go back out to finish his business without proper supplies and probably healing for his people.

Anders leaves the Undercity, following a dark tunnel upwards into the dusk and the eternal orange sunset of the foundries. Foundries he will never be able to look at without seeing Leandra's mangled remains stitched to the corpse-bits of the other women. Averting his eyes, he passes the foundries and heads around a few twisting, convoluted streets to the Hanged Man.

Stepping into the smoky haze of burning tobacco, stale cheap booze, unwashed bodies, and fresh vomit is the closest Anders has ever felt to coming home. Even the unholy stench is a welcoming comfort. Normally, anyway, as the sense of comfort fades when he notices that the Wardens are already here. Unlike the Marcher Wardens, Cousland's pack wears no uniforms.

It's the taint that gives them away. And the posture. Wardens are haunted in a way no other people in the world are. And some of Cousland's new people are extremely distinctive. The Dalish archer, for one, stands out like a sore thumb.

And then there's the other male elf of the lot, one Anders remembers from their imprisonment together in Kinloch Hold.

"Jailbait! Long time no see, old friend!"

Anders winces. As far as pet names go, he vastly prefers being called Blondie. Or even Mage, or Abomination, depending on what mood Fenris is in. But Surana had cultivated a habit of being offensive to people he cared about in the Circle to protect them from the more abusive Templars, and he'd always made fun of Anders for having missed the 'awkward' stage of teenager-dom.

No, Anders had been an _attractive_ teenager, he remembers that without false modesty, and avoiding sexual assault had been a very near thing sometimes. That and his penchant for getting himself locked up had earned him the name 'Jailbait'. Apparently Surana hasn't forgotten.

**Abomination!**

_We'd be one to talk, Justice. Surana didn't have a choice, remember? Uldred's coup at the Circle, forcing demons on mages and Templars to build an army…?_

Justice quiets grudgingly, stewing in his instinctive dislike of demons. Rage demons, especially, remind Justice – or maybe that's Anders' imagination – of what he's becoming. Vengeance is little more than a demon of rage with extraordinary focus, intelligence, and calculation, after all.

"Surana. Long time. Could you not call me that?"

"Spoilsport." The smiles fall. And that's odd enough, Surana smiling. Back in the Circle he was an embodiment of rage in and of himself. The application of a demon has done little harm, apparently. "Maybe now's not the time for jokes anyway. Cousland told you…?"

Anders nods. "Yes. He told me."

"We figured she's not our only lost one. Mahariel's over there carving candles, if you have anybody you'd like to memorialize for the moment."

Surana jerks a thumb at the Dalish archer, who is seated in a seat at the end of the Warden table, using a stylus to scratch names into tallow candles in elegant script. Hawke is hovering over the archer's shoulder, and Anders can see Leandra's name being written on one of them.

On the table are several others. Anders can read Aeducan's name, the Cousland family, and even one for Varric's brother – despite the resentment over that betrayal, Varric must still miss Bartrand on some level. It probably doesn't help that Bartrand was completely mad, possessed by the corrupted lyrium idol – Anders remembers returning Bartrand briefly to lucidity with a sharp pang of bitterness. Bartrand isn't dead, but he might as well be; there are some ills even Anders can't fix. Ser Wesley – Aveline's dead husband. Hawke's sister Bethany. Another name, 'Tamlen'.

Merrill has mentioned a Tamlen. A clan-mate who was lost to that blasted mirror she still obsesses over to this day. Thinking of comrades and obsession and loss brings a name to Anders' mind, an old friend, an old lover, dead by Anders' own hand.

Karl Thekla.

Tonight is a sad night, apparently. Everyone is getting their grief out on these candles. Precisely what little ritual the candles are going to be used for Anders doesn't know, but he knows it's needed, whatever it is. Closure, of a sort. Recognizing the dead and the not-yet-dead.

Maybe they should add, while they're at it, the women who died to Leandra's murderer and made up the pieces of the madman's corpse-bride.

Merrill is standing just outside of the press of people. All of Hawke's other companions are crowded close. Even Isabela is carving her own candle, probably adding the names of the crew she lost in the storm that brought her to Kirkwall.

The archer – Mahariel, Surana called him – looks up at her with exasperated pointedness. "You were First of our clan, Merrill. Can you still sing, or have you forgotten that too, along with what that mirror did to Tamlen?"

Bitter, hostile. The same tone the rest of her clan-mates take with her. Anders has used that tone of voice himself a time or two, or six, as has Fenris. The difference now, as opposed to when Anders and Fenris speak to her so sharply, is that now Merrill looks as if she's been slapped.

"How could you think I'd forget that, of all things?"

"I don't know. It just seems like you've forgotten a lot of things."

Anders gets closer to the table, sees more candles and more names. There are a lot. He doesn't recognize a lot of them, but then there are names like _Kristoff_ that make Justice choke. Anders takes a seat between Cousland and Fenris, both of whom are deep in their cups. Fenris is considerably less drunk, however, which either means he hasn't been drinking as long or Cousland's out of practice.

The healer picks up a blank candle and scratches Karl's name into it with his fingernails, lacking a stylus or a dagger, like Isabela is using. Another candle, more names. Quentin's victims, Seamus Dumar. As much as it galls him to write a templar's name, Anders adds Ser Emeric. One of the good ones. If there can be any good Templars at all, Emeric was one of them.

One of the mages went missing from the Gallows – Mharen, one of Quentin's victims. Instead of assuming she'd turned to blood magic and run away, Emeric had been terrified that Mharen was in trouble, that something bad had happened to her, and had done his utmost to find her. Had failed, but had tried, and that matters to Justice and Anders both.

"Anyone you want to say goodbye to?" he asks Fenris.

"I remember no one whose death I wish to honor, apart from those who are already written," Fenris replies, gesturing at the candle Hawke is cradling.

Once the candles are all marked with names, or sometimes just groups – 'The Honored Casteless of Kal'Hirol', for example – Mahariel begins collecting them up into a sack.

"I don't know what the rest of you do, but we sing for our dead," he explains. "I think I once heard of Chantry-folk lighting candles, and the only tree in this city is the _vhenadahl_, which has roots in the stone. Best way I can think of to blend traditions. Let's go, then."

Mahariel leads the way out of the Hanged Man, back out into the night air of Lowtown. It's full dark outside, except where the foundries lave the sky in volcanic orange. Nobody's walking in step, but it feels like a funeral procession. Actually, it is, come to think of it.

Everyone fans out around the brightly painted _vhenadahl_ while Mahariel sets out the candles. Anders isn't sure what it says about anything that they've separated, Wardens on one side, Hawke's people on the other, and he's been lumped with the Wardens. The candles are arranged, and Surana raises a hand, eyes glowing a dull red. The candles light simultaneously, bathing the entire Alienage courtyard in flickering flame-glow.

Mahariel and Merrill take their positions nearest the _vhenadahl_, each with one hand raised as if to touch palm to palm, though they never do. Mahariel begins first, a wordless prelude to allow Merrill to catch the correct pitch. He has a rich tenor, which blends beautifully with Merrill's airy soprano. Then the words begin, and Anders feels the power of the song pulling at his heart.

"_Hahren na melana sahlin,"_ they sing. Anders recognizes the words. Merrill spoke them that day, long ago, when they'd first met her. A ritual on Sundermount, an errand for an old witch. The 'chant' had sounded odd at the time.

"_Emma ir abelas…"_ Now it's more moving than the Chant of Light could ever hope to be. One part music, two parts feeling.

"_Souver'inan isala hamin…" _Tears prickle at Anders' eyes. He can't understand a word of what is being sung but the _tone_ he can understand quite well. The voices sing of grief.

"_Vhenan him dor'felas…" _Even Justice is not unaffected by the beauty of the song or the upwelling of emotions that the song evokes. The spirit squirms uncomfortably, drowning in human emotions he doesn't like, and realizing that he _needs_ to feel this. Remaining aloof and detached from so much loss would be an injustice.

"_In uthenera na revas…"_ Varric has his eyes tightly shut, a hand over his heart. Fenris stares, transfixed, at the fire-shadows on the leaves of the _vhenadahl_.

The tears stream freely, unchecked, down Anders' face. And because Justice can't cry without him, he cries for the spirit as well. They aren't the only ones. Hawke is crying also. Isabela stares into the flames of the candles, shadows and firelight glistening in the tear tracks on her dark cheeks. Cousland is on his knees, staring up at the moon. Quietly, discreetly, lyrium-etched fingers interlace with Anders' own.

"_Vir sulahn'nehn…"_ Anders gives Fenris' hand a brief squeeze. Reassurance, thanks, something tangible, a mutual need for contact.

"_Vir dirthera…"_ Aveline bows her head. She's not a woman of faith of any kind, but she sees and hears beauty in some of the rituals of faith. And though she's moved on, found a new man, lets her dead husband's memory rest – this is the first formal memorial Wesley has gotten. She doesn't cry, but her eyes are misty nonetheless.

"_Vir samahl la numin…"_ There are eyes in the shadows, the elves who live in the Alienage, watching with tears in their own eyes. They've lost much themselves.

"_Vir'lath sa'vunin…" _Anders tucks his chin to his chest and chokes back a shuddering sob. The pain is healing, in its own way – like abrading a wound, scraping out the infection so that everything can heal cleanly – but it still hurts. And so many people are dead, so few left behind to mourn them.

Fenris lifts their joined hands, pressing a lingering kiss to the back of Anders' hand, a rare gesture of affection. Not a soul notices except Anders, who, undone by the kindness, can't suppress the next sob, or the one after that.

Merrill and Mahariel, their own eyes wet, finish out the song by repeating the last four lines and trailing off into silence. Fueled by Surana's magic, the candles burn down to nothing. Not even wax stains remain, though the _vhenadahl _is undisturbed.

This moment is sacred. Anders will speak to the others later. There will be plenty of time in the morning.

* * *

><p>In the shadows of the Alienage, a hooded figure watches the others disperse into the night. His own eyes are not dry. Markelius mourns the loss of his wife, the loss of his partner, the loss of his partner's wife – so many dead, and for what?<p>

Soon. Soon, Hawke's price will be paid. The symbols have been chosen. It is almost time.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Sorry for the long delay. I'm no longer job hunting, as I've found actual employment. At a Chinese restaurant. Where my job should involve food but instead involves sanding and painting benches no one ever sits on. Also, this chapter didn't cooperate very well. I tried to make it a little funny, and then it wanted to be all sad. It also wanted to include Origins OCs like nobody's business.<strong>

**I promise, I will get to the wings prompt soon. This is just…background. Mostly unnecessary, but it sets a stage. The explanation for all of the Origins being around may be illustrated later, depending on what all y'all think. Interested? Or should I just skip over that and go straight to the gory stuff?**

**Also, points and cookies for noticing the world's smallest self-insert character mention. 1879 – you already know the answer. No cheating:) Mm, speaking of my fellow wings!prompt author – you should all read her stuff if you aren't already. That detail and imagery…is like mind-fuckingly awesome.**

**So…long-ish chapter, mostly Anders introspection and a little glimpse of Justice. Justice is another one of those tragic quasi-villains I love so much, and the poor guy gets blamed for everything. Sure, he's responsible for about a third of what he gets blamed for, but why? That'd be why I spent so much time in Anders' head this chapter. It should be more action next time.**

**Oh, and one last thing. Thank you all for being patient with me. I know I'm a friggin' slow updater, and it means a lot to still have people trickling in and adding 'Menagerie' to their favorites/alerts list. And the feedback? You are all awesome. Oh, and feel free to point it out if you think I've completely borked something, like in the prologue when I tried to spell 'panic' with a k on the end. Feedback will be listened to (read) and mistakes will be corrected. The point of being such a slow updater is _giving y'all something worth reading_, after all, so headslap me if I'm not doing my job:)**

**EDIT: Thank you, 1879, for pointing out my annoying tendency to add extra letters to things that don't need extra letters. In this case, poor Alain, whose name I was spelling with an extra 'e' on the end. Okay, here's the slightly less dipshit version of this chapter...^^"**


	4. World on Fire

Menagerie – Chapter Three – World on Fire

It's two mornings after the memorial ceremony before Anders can speak to Hawke in relative privacy. Fenris hovers at the periphery, as he usually does. He stays mostly out of the way of the assistants, in particular a young woman in distinctively male attire – and she's shouldered him out of the way more than once.

If asked, Fenris could not explain why he's here or who he's here for. He and Hawke are mutually unimpressed with one another, although Garrett seems one of the few mages Fenris has ever met that isn't a raging maleficar. Technically, they still haven't sorted out their power dynamic. Fenris was Garrett's employer, now Garrett _might_ be Fenris' employer, or really just that mage Fenris follows around for lack of anything better to do.

Anders, on the other hand…is no longer yelling. Fenris perks up, paying sharper attention. Anders gets loud when he's frustrated but grave-whisper quiet when he's _angry_, genuinely murderous. Angry and genuinely murderous on his own, that is, because Justice is rather sonorous and _booms_ rather than shouting.

The clinic goes deathly still, the assistants and refugee watch-dogs freezing in place. Slowly, their gazes turn toward Hawke and turn hostile. Garrett Hawke may be someone impressive in Kirkwall proper but this is Darktown, and in Darktown, Anders is something of a saint. And the refugees are extremely protective of their patron saint of healing.

Hawke seems to realize this, belatedly, and stops goading Anders. Fenris doesn't need to involve himself or even tune in enough to hear what they're saying.

Fenris is distracted. Sorely. Ostensibly he should be here for Hawke, but if he's honest with himself – and that's hard; Fenris can be brutally honest with everyone _except_ himself – he's here for Anders. To protect him from Hawke? Hopefully not. Such a thought is too awkward to explain even in the privacy of his own head. And Hawke wouldn't really…no, no, the two mages have been outright pissy with each other since Carver became a Templar, but Garrett isn't stupid enough to actually pick a real fight with Anders.

Or Justice. They've seen firsthand what Justice can do when given proper incentive.

It isn't pretty.

"Fine. Fine. If you're that damn bothered by it we can take a look," Hawke snarls.

Anders rocks back on his heels, eyes narrow. This is wrong. Such a hostile expression belongs on the face of Tevinter's most terrifying magisters, not on Anders'. It's disconcerting to think that Anders of all people has mastered the lip-curling sneer better than even Hadriana ever had.

"So nice to see you so concerned," and that airy tone of voice doesn't match his expression either and everything about Anders is _wrong_ today. "Mages – like you I might add – are only being illegally made Tranquil by the handful these days."

The wrongness forces Fenris to pay attention, and he's been trying not to pay attention because everything is wrong. Anders has tried to apologize for apparently misjudging Carver. Garrett hasn't wanted to hear it.

Varric sighs from somewhere around Fenris' left elbow. "I miss the old days. You know, when you and Blondie fought, and you and Hawke fought, and Hawke and Blondie were best friends. This is just breaking my heart." The dwarf pats his chest over where his heart is, his impressive mat of golden curls crinkling audibly beneath his hand.

"Allow me to guess," Fenris adds, attempting a bit of droll to lighten the mood. "Much more of this and Bianca will have to settle matters herself."

"You're psychic, Broody, you really are."

"Shut up, both of you," Hawke snaps.

Varric inhales sharply, looking as though he's just been slapped. Perhaps he has. Garrett Hawke doesn't get along totally with most of his companions but Varric and Isabela have always been his best friends. At the very least, neither of them has ever seen the truly cranky side of him before.

A blind man could see that this is a side of Hawke that Varric doesn't like. At all. Least of all when it's directed at him personally.

"Leave them out of this," Anders hisses. Fenris has the mental image of a strawberry-blond cat with his back arched and his ears pinned back, all teeth and claws. "Don't punish Fenris and Varric just because you're feeling bitchy. If you're angry with me, yell at _me_, not _them_."

A mutter, for Fenris' ears alone: "I'm thinking of making Blondie the new hero in my stories. What do you think?"

Fenris shrugs. He's no storyteller. He's not even literate. Hawke learned that one the hard way some weeks back, attempting to gift Fenris a book about the elf hero Shartan so that he could _'have fodder to wax further on the evils of the Imperium and the hardships of slaves.'_ It wasn't so much frustration at being unlettered that had caused Fenris to throw the book at Hawke's head as it was the wording and tone of voice the book had been presented with. Fenris is not looking for pity when he mentions his days in Tevinter. He's providing clarity. His anger at magic and mages is not without foundation. And Hawke _had_ asked, in much cruder lexicon, what the bur in Fenris' saddle blanket was about mages.

Asked, answered. One would think that the end of things.

But Garrett Hawke is nothing if not tenaciously obnoxious.

Garrett looks as though he's about to take Anders up on that offer. A deep inhale to preempt another tirade of Anders-is-a-madman and you-called-my-brother-a-traitor_-I-apologized_-I-don't-care. Obviously they have somewhere else to be and Fenris doesn't particularly care where, just that it isn't here. And if they have something to do, Garrett and Anders will have to stop fighting. And maybe Hawke won't get shanked by refugees for threatening their favorite saint.

He steps forward, interposing himself between Hawke and Anders. His back is to Anders, because Anders is not a threat to him. He's facing Hawke because Hawke _is_.

"Enough. Will you spend all day arguing pointlessly or are we going to look into this?"

If he keeps his face carefully blank, perhaps neither mage will notice that Fenris actually has very little idea of what they're supposed to be looking into. He has only paid enough attention to know that it has something to do with the increasing number of Tranquil.

One problem at a time.

Their mystery pursuer can wait a time, since he/she/it/they/them isn't doing anything overt. Hawke is probably the only one who doesn't know they're being followed. Fenris has spent too much of what little of his life he remembers constantly searching for unseen followers to not realize he has one now.

And having Anders over at his borrowed mansion last night for one of their periodic chats only confirmed Fenris' suspicions.

Varric? What use is a spy network like Varric's if it doesn't keep him informed?

The dwarf himself has an eyebrow raised. He's staring pointedly at the way Fenris stepped in to essentially _protect Anders from Hawke_. No time to feel embarrassed now. No time to break rhythm or falter. If he loses his momentum now, he will fail.

Fail what? Freedom, probably. Lacking a spine to take a stand, Fenris would be nothing more than still just a slave. Fail who? Anders. The answer comes easily; the explanation for the answer does not. Fenris will think on it later. Or _brood_ on it later, as he is so often accused of.

Hawke looks, for a moment, like he's going to take a swing at Anders and damn all if Fenris is in the way. Fenris stares him down. Hawke finally backs off, muttering viciously, storming out of the clinic and not waiting to see if his companions catch up.

Anders catches Fenris' shoulder, dodging the upswept spikes. The healer's face has softened into an expression of gratitude. "Thanks for that. He's more insufferable than usual, lately."

Varric is staring again. Ordinarily, having the audacity to touch Fenris in such a fashion results in the elf glowing and very nearly eviscerating the body attached to the hand.

Anders is fine. Unscathed. Fenris, instead of glowing and reacting violently, places his hand over Anders', and Varric's eyebrows are flirting with his hairline.

"We should catch up. Does Hawke even know where to go from here?"

Anders chuckles. "No, not really."

Anders squeezes Fenris' shoulder one last time and heads out after Hawke, leaving Fenris more or less alone with Varric in the clinic. They follow, but slower. Varric brushes imaginary dirt off of his duster and sniffs loudly.

"So. Broody. Blondie's cute, I guess, if you're into scruffy, underfed apostates. I knew things were different between you two. Just thought you'd gotten tired of fighting. Didn't think there was a _thing_."

"A _thing_."

"Yeah, a _thing_. You know. That little thing right there with the touching and the soft glances. I didn't figure Blondie for your type. Mage. Also, confrontational."

"It's not…it…this is not going into any of your books." It's a question, but not inflected like one.

Varric sighs. "Not in anything I publish anyway. Unless it's really good. Then I'll just change the names. Either way, your secret's safe with me."

Fenris clenches his jaw for a moment, teeth shifting with the pressure, and then he lets out a breath of Darktown's stale, tainted air. Varric's as close to a friend as either Fenris or Anders has. Maybe he is their friend.

And nobody actually believes what Varric writes, anyway. Do they?

"It was one night." Fenris pauses, wrinkling his nose as he steps over a pair of unconscious drunks. Maybe the drunks are dead. No way to know and keep walking at the same time. "We talked. Agreed to disagree."

"And…?"

"And what, Dwarf?"

Varric grumbles. "You really need to work on your storytelling, Broody. That was _dry_. Sadly lacking in details. Although what you didn't say says more than you think you said."

The dwarf was apparently going to say something else, but they've caught up to Anders and Hawke and continuing their tack of conversation would be unhelpful and probably embarrassing. For Fenris. Nothing embarrasses Varric, near as he can tell.

Anders pulls open a trap door made of rotting wood, stained with mud, blood, and even less savory fluids. The feathered coat, while ridiculous in a social setting, in this context makes him look every inch the freedom-fighting renegade. The mage exudes a kind of inexorable charisma here, at the threshold of the Underground's main escape route, the kind of charisma that inspires others to fall into step behind him, to not panic when the situation goes south.

It's an attractive look on him, Fenris has to admit – at least privately – but he wishes Anders would put this kind of charm to use freeing some other group of the oppressed. Oppression is everywhere. He would not lack for a cause. But the cause that is near and dear to the healer's heart is the mages.

Fenris can understand why. He's seen the wreck of Anders' body – what the mage hides behind many-layered coats and quirky jokes. The Circle is not an ideal solution to anything. But a world of free mages is a hellish nightmare Fenris has been running from for as long as he can remember. Maybe not every mage wants to resurrect the Imperium – but those who don't want to enslave others will be slain or enslaved by those who do, and the Imperium will expand once more.

However, preventing illegal Tranquility seems an acceptable compromise in the meantime. The Templars of Kirkwall remind Fenris uncomfortably of the magisters. And this is wrong. Only mages should remind him of magisters.

Anders leads the way down into the dark of the tunnel with a brief warning to watch out for smugglers. Lyrium runners, servicing the Templars, enslaved to the stuff by the Chantry.

Is nothing in this world not broken?

"I can't believe he trusts _you_ of all people to help with this," Garrett mutters, sneering at Fenris before following Anders down into the shadows.

"You know, Hawke used to be fun. Now he's just _bitchy_," Varric grumbles, reaching up to clap Fenris' shoulder in a show of solidarity, thinking better of it, and descending into the tunnel instead.

Fenris shakes his head and tails the others, catching up easily. He's a leggy elf, with a quick stride. No time to think about how contrary Hawke is being at the moment. On the one hand, not wanting to help Anders because he's angry at the healer. On the other hand, not wanting Fenris here because the elf might get in the healer's way.

He wants to tell Hawke to make up his damn mind, but Fenris tries to avoid hypocrisy whenever he can. Fenris is conflicted enough on his own that he can't rightly chastise someone else for the same problem.

The smugglers are a welcome distraction, for the short time they're alive. Hawke is a master force mage, dragging the smugglers into a vortex of power in the middle of a cave 'room' in the tunnels, and, once they're neatly collected in the middle, he smashes them against the ceiling and then the ground again.

Fenris and Varric pick off the dazed and wounded smugglers. Anders has one Carta assassin in a crushing prison spell and is beating another to death with his staff.

Not many mages are particularly good in the art of physical combat. Especially not in Tevinter, where the power is constantly _there_. Slaves to bleed for magic, the streets wet with blood from constant duels between magisters. No magister ever needs to use a staff beyond a focus and a symbol of status. And Circle mages never see combat so long as they remain in the Circle.

Anders is a sight to behold, smashing the Carta assassin with both ends of the staff before bringing the weapon down onto the dwarf's head, sending the dazed thug back into Fenris' blade. The other assassin gurgles, vomiting her own entrails from the crushing prison. Fenris spares Anders a small, tight smile, and puts the other assassin out of her misery. The spell dissolves, and the headless dwarf drops with a fruity _splat_, bones ground down to sand and muscles reduced to a quivering, fibrous pulp.

Perhaps beheading her was unnecessary.

The sound of a girl screaming up ahead cuts short any plans of congratulatory revelry for a battle well-fought. Anders sets off at a sprint, paced closely by Fenris, Hawke and Varric just behind them.

It's a better-lit little cave where the Templars have the girl on her knees. None of the obscuring dim where the smugglers hide their crates, it's quite easy to see the tears glistening down her dark-skinned cheeks.

"Please, please don't make me Tranquil!" she begs, thin voice reedy with panic and cracking. She's so terrified she _stinks_ of fear. Fenris can smell her from more than fifteen feet away, nostrils full of the bitter, blade-sharp stench of mortal terror.

"You were trying to escape," the lead Templar coos, his calm in the face of her panic almost as obscene as the sight of eleven grown, armed men in heavy armor surrounding an unarmed teenage girl. "You've been a bad little mage, haven't you?"

"Please, I just wanted to send a letter to my mother! I wasn't trying to escape, I promise! I'd never try to escape!"

"That's right," the Templar answers. His bald head shines in the torchlight, ice-blue eyes almost warm with amusement. "The Tranquil never try to escape."

"Please, please, I'll do anything you want, please, just don't make me Tranquil!"

"Of course you'll do anything I want, once you're Tranquil."

The girl is sobbing, begging like a slave. Part of Fenris wonders when she'll turn to blood magic and demons to save herself. The rest of his mind is reeling with disgust. The Templar sounds like Hadriana on her calm days, a particularly vocal slave caught in her claws. That same smooth, buttery tone of voice, sweet with an almost sexual pleasure in the face of another's suffering.

Anders is shaking. Black smoke and blue light show through his skin in erratic bursts. The healer loses his struggle to contain Justice – or is it Vengeance this time? – and surges forward on a wave of arcane might no mere mage could ever summon alone.

Eleven Templars becomes fifteen, hunters melting from the shadows at the sight of what can only be an abomination crashing down on them like a glowing, smoking avalanche of rage. Forced into action, Hawke calls fire down on them like molten rain and Varric levels Bianca at a Templar with a bow.

Fenris lets calm settle over his mind. There is no mage girl begging for her life. There are no Templars. The tunnels are not exploding around him. There is only _breathe_ and _strike_. They _will not_ strike him; he will not _let_ them. _Breathe._ He _will_ strike them; he will not _let_ them stop him.

His blade bites deep. Fenris phases through this Templar before the arc of arterial crimson can even touch the ground. Onto the next. _Strike. Breathe. Strike._

Fifteen Templars becomes twenty two. The bald Templar was not stupid enough to bait a mage into possibly becoming an abomination without backup waiting in the wings in case she picked up something powerful in her desperation.

The air becomes syrup, reducing the Templars to a slug-like crawl. Fenris, already swifter than the knights in their bulky, cumbersome uniform plate, is now _flying_ through them. Quarrels fly around him, close enough that Fenris can feel the breeze. He simply trusts that Varric can predict his movements enough not to hit him.

Twenty two Templars becomes none. Hawke smashes a Knight-Lieutenant against the ceiling, breaking her neck. Fenris cuts the head off of the last archer. Vengeance rips the Templar leader's throat out between Anders' teeth.

Vengeance approaches the girl, a hand extended to her like an offering of peace and safety. Her eyes, however, big and brown and _scared_ are fixed on the smoking and the glowing and the blood dribbling from his mouth. She screams.

"No – who – what – get away from me _demon_!"

"**I am no demon! I am Justice. I am Vengeance. Are you so corrupted by **_**them**_** that you would consider me a demon?"**

Hawke growls. "Right about now? I certainly would. How about you boys?"

It galls Fenris to be called a boy, for one, and that Hawke can be so confrontationally flippant when the wrong comment could possibly get that girl _killed_. Vengeance roars, the girl screams again, and Fenris steps forward.

Maybe it isn't wise to do so right now, but he sheathes his blade across his back first, raises his hands in a placating gesture. It's symbolic. He doesn't need a blade to kill when his hands are just as practical.

"Anders!" Fenris barks, keeping the attention on _him_ and not on _her_ or Hawke's asinine commentary. "You said you could control this. _I can control it_, is that not what you said?" The point is to make Anders mad enough to shove Vengeance aside and give Fenris a piece of his mind. And with Fenris moving steadily forward, if Vengeance leaps to the attack, the girl will be safe.

Fenris doesn't trust most mages. This doesn't translate to him wanting them all _dead_, especially not scared little girls who are afraid of disappointing their mothers and who can't muster the vitriol to summon a demon even in a dire, life-threatening situation.

He'd also like Anders alive, if that's at all possible.

"This isn't you, Anders. You're a healer, not a killer. You run a free clinic in Darktown for refugees and quibble over mangy cats. You work to _free_ mages, and how can you do that if you kill them before they can walk free?"

Vengeance ripples, shuddering. Good. Anders is still in there, fighting to regain control of his own body.

"You say you're not a dangerous abomination? Prove it to me, Anders. _Prove it!_"

The ripples become more violent, and then Anders rips control back. Gasping, the mage falls to his knees. The mage girl panics and runs away sobbing. Anders does something of the same, hauling himself to his feet and bolting down a separate side-passage.

"Well, isn't that just _lovely_. You know what? I don't even care anymore. I'm out of here. Late meeting Isabela in Lowtown – she's got a lead on that relic. Coming?"

"In a minute, Hawke," Varric tells him. The force mage storms out, shouting something about being at the Hanged Man when they bother to show up. Varric groans, and then shuffles through the Templar leader's belongings. He finds a sheaf of parchment, skimming it quickly, pointedly ignoring the hole in the man's throat shaped like a human bite.

"Anything?"

Varric nods. "I was hoping Blondie was just crazy, you know? But this Alrik fellow actually had a 'Tranquil Solution' in mind." The dwarf shudders. "Looks like Meredith and the Grand Cleric vetoed it, but Alrik was going to go through with it anyway. Look, Broody, I've gotta go keep Hawke in line. Why don't you take this to Blondie? It might calm him down a little."

"I will. Keep safe, dwarf."

"Likewise."

Varric tosses him the rolled scroll and leaves. Fenris is alone amidst the corpses. A bit of cursory looting grosses about a sovereign in assorted copper and silver coins. Worth something for the clinic perhaps.

Heaving a sigh, Fenris makes his way out of the blood-damp tunnels, slightly shaky with the after-effects of battle and the fatigue of cutting through Templars. They're better trained and certainly tougher and more skilled than the thugs he's been practicing on. He follows the blood trail out of the side passage Anders disappeared down, which leads him easily even in the gloom.

Humans can say what they will about elves. Humans are still unnecessarily blind in the dark.

Back out in the somewhat brighter dim of the Undercity, Fenris loses the blood trail but in all likelihood it's a moot point. People as upset as Anders is at the moment predictably go where they feel safest. Home. For Anders, this is his clinic.

Fenris guesses correctly. When he arrives, Anders is already sorting through his meager belongings, bitterly throwing everything except a hand-embroidered pillow into the 'trash' pile.

"Planning to run now, are you?"

Anders is wheeling around on his feet faster than Fenris has ever seen the mage move. Wild-eyed and feral, terrified of himself. "I can't stay here. I almost killed that girl. I thought I had Justice in check but we almost killed that girl! I can't…I can't trust myself anymore. What if I turn on my patients here at the clinic or on…on you?"

"This is not the kind of problem that can be run from. Anders…you're bleeding."

Anders, distracted, looks down at himself. His coat is full of holes soaked in dull scarlet.

"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore. I can't lead a revolution if I'm every reason mages are locked up to begin with, and I can't…you…you deserve better than a mindless abomination, you know that?"

The mage's voice cracks on the last word, already rough from the abuse of a spirit speaking from his vocal chords. He takes Fenris' hand, places the articulated gauntlet right over where his heart beats wildly.

"Ending it now might save a lot of lives."

Indignation flares through Fenris, setting his lyrium brands alight with fierce luminescence. White, not blue. He isn't going to phase his hand through Anders' chest no matter how much the mage wants him to, at the moment, and he's sure as the Void not going to do it on accident. Instead, Fenris curls his clawed gauntlet into Anders' coat and drags the mage down to eye-level.

"You will reconsider how you refer to yourself, _mage_." Acting on anger, Fenris crushes his lips against Anders' – ignoring, for the moment, the taste of human blood. It isn't quite a kiss, for all its similarity of motion, but a gesture of frustration and no small amount of rage directed at and around this man.

Anders isn't Fenris' lover the same way this isn't a kiss. Whether they're that complicated or that simple is a problem Fenris hasn't had time to puzzle through yet. Weeks aren't long enough, especially not with Hawke constantly posing a distraction.

"I've been learning to respect your strength," Fenris snarls when he draws back. "And idiot though you are, you are not _mindless_." Fenris sighs, resting his forehead against Anders'. "Do not make me regret my inexplicable fondness for you."

Anders laughs. The sound is more than half hysterical, more desperation than actual amusement, but he no longer looks or sounds suicidal and Fenris is going to consider this a small victory.

The mage cradles Fenris' face with both hands and kisses him. A real kiss, this time, insistent but gentle, affection rather than frustration. A real smile sits on Anders' lips when he pulls back. "Fenris, don't ever change."

"You used to demand I change."

Anders lets go, withdraws, picks up the embroidered pillow and hugs it to his chest. "I…Justice doesn't understand the appeal of enjoying someone _because_ of their frustrating, difficult personality. I don't know as many people do, but he gets angry and flustered about his lack of understanding and…well. _I_ happen to like you the way you are. Just in case we die tomorrow, or something, I figure I should say that out loud."

Those words should not fill Fenris with as much warmth as they do.

"I…"

What Fenris is about to say is cut off by one of the clinic assistants bursting in, wide-eyed and scared, though not for the reasons that Anders was recently in the same condition. Fenris will have to give Anders the parchment later, apparently.

"I can't find Moira!" the young woman blurts. "She just, she just disappeared – I don't know where to, I just turned around and she wasn't there anymore!"

The ice settling in Anders' gut is easy enough to see. "How long ago?"

"I don't know, two hours, three?"

"Damn! Not Mark too."

Now Fenris is confused. Who is this Moira and why is Anders calling her Mark? He thinks back and remembers a young woman dressed as a man, a clinic helper who had spent just enough time elbowing Fenris out of the way to leave an impression.

Ah. Fenris instead seizes upon the other significant part of Anders' statement. "Not Mark _too_? Exactly how many people have you misplaced?"

"Too many. Mostly just the people with major deformities, injuries, birth defects. Mark's healthy though, I don't know…_shit_. Maybe being a man in a woman's body is deformity enough? _Shit_. If Aveline had just _believed_ me when I said people were disappearing down here…"

A dark cloud for every silver lining, apparently. Anders is no longer wallowing in fear of himself. Instead, he's animated, driven, _focused_. Everything he should be. But one of his assistants is missing and apparently people have been disappearing for a while.

"Then let's go."

They leave the clinic in step with one another and begin their search. Fenris struggles to remember fine details. 'Cross-dressing woman' is fairly vague. Dark, short-shorn hair? Yes, yes, he-she-_they_ had had short hair, styled like Anders' but less neatly trimmed – and that's almost funny, because Anders looks like he cuts his hair with a dull knife. What else? Short. A few inches shorter than Fenris, maybe Merrill's height. Lumpy, incongruously shaped, not attractive enough to have to worry about the Coterie blackmailing _them_ into prostitution.

The problem with Moira/Mark is that she/he's so damn forgettable. Except for the shoulders and elbows. Fenris well remembers the shoulders and elbows.

He and Anders comb the Undercity, searching the alleyways and crevices, the sewers, the mining tunnels, anywhere Moira – Mark, Anders corrects, because Mark is how this person identifies _him_self – might be hiding or might have been hidden by a hostile third party.

Hours later, what must be approaching dawn in the world above, the entire foundation of Kirkwall shakes violently. Structures feeble with neglect tear themselves apart under the strain, and Anders is thrown off his feet and nearly knocks Fenris over as well.

Memory does nothing so kind or passive as _trickle,_ or _ooze_, or even _gush_. Memory _assaults_ Fenris. Assaults him brutally with recollection of the last time the world shook so pugnaciously around him. For just a solitary moment he is back on the island of Seheron, a tool of the magisters in a heated battle against the Qunari.

The Qunari, who are attempting to defeat blood magic with explosive powder.

The Qunari, who are now in Kirkwall, stranded for lack of their precious relic and…

_Shit._

He could swear in Arcanum, but he's been trying to work on that. Varric complains he can't spell in Arcanum and how is he supposed to transcribe their adventures if Fenris continues to be indecipherable?

"What was _that_?" Anders demands, struggling to his feet despite the continued quaking.

"I believe the Qunari are probably unimpressed with Hawke's diplomacy."

"_Shit!_"

"My thoughts exactly. Where is the closest path to the surface from here?"

"Uh…" Anders looks around quickly, getting his bearings, and then points. "That way. It'll lead us to Lowtown and we can get to Hightown from there – see if we can meet up with Hawke or Aveline or someone."

Fenris sets off at a run. For a while he can hear Anders right behind him, and then the ambient noise gets to be too much. There are Qunari everywhere when he gets topside. Not just the tall, horned _kossith_ either, but also their _viddathari _converts, mostly elves, the occasional human disenchanted with the Chantry and desperate for a faith that makes more sense.

Who or whatever they are doesn't matter. Fenris finds himself cutting through anyone and anything in red war paint. Forward, always forward, constantly alert for a familiar face. Varric, Isabela, Aveline, shit, even Hawke would be a welcome sight at this point in time.

People are running, and screaming, and dying. Fenris sees the Grey Wardens here and there, loathe to become embroiled in political conflict but without any other option.

Cousland is a whirlwind of death scything through the red-painted attackers, longsword in each hand. For the moment Fenris can believe the man's a fighting legend. But seeing Cousland and the other Wardens makes Fenris think to look behind.

Anders is gone.

It's barely dawn, the sky dark with smoke. Kirkwall is lit solely by the flames of its people burning, people and homes and merchants' carts. Lowtown is burning the worst. It's a lot of distraction.

And Anders is nowhere to be found.

Fenris doubles back, calling for the mage, but he gets no answer and finds no trace. He has to trust, for the moment, that Anders can take care of himself, however, because the Qunari are not going to politely pause in their conquest of Kirkwall just so he can find one lone apostate. Fenris is alone. He doesn't like the feeling much, but he has to keep moving.

Perhaps he should have known Anders was missing when the first wave of attackers hit him and there was no wave of arcane force backing him up. But there is no _time_ for self-recrimination. He has to find Hawke.

He does, in Hightown, ducked into the shadows in front of the old Amell estate. Hawke is bleeding from a cut over his eye and covered in soot, but otherwise okay. Varric is bent double next to him, wheezing from the smoke and likely the exertion of getting there. Garrett eyes Fenris sharply.

"What, no Anders? Couldn't be bothered to show up, I suppose."

Fenris snarls. "He was right behind me. I think I lost him midway through Lowtown. There were… complications."

Hawke snorts. "Whatever. Come on. The Arishok is probably in the Viscount's keep by now. If we're going to stop him, we should start there. And hope Aveline's rallied the guard by now."

The mage stalks off in that direction. Varric rights himself, brushing very real dust off of his duster this time. The dwarf adjusts Bianca where she sits across his back, eyes Fenris' blood-streaked form up and down.

"Ran into some trouble eh? Think Blondie's okay?"

"I hope so, Dwarf. I…I would not like to think he was hurt for my own inattention."

"Blondie's a tough cookie, Broody. Stronger than he looks. He'll be okay." Varric could be trying to reassure Fenris, or himself. Fenris would place money on the latter. They set off after Hawke up to the keep.

Hawke is deep in conversation with, oddly enough, Knight Commander Meredith and First Enchanter Orsino. Meredith seems to want to charge in, damn the consequences and the innocents who might die in the charge. Orsino wants to draw the Qunari out, which might not save the people trapped inside the keep in time.

Hawke snarls that they should follow _his_ lead instead of arguing with each other – spending time arguing is less productive than either of their plans – and orders Orsino to set the distraction to draw the door guards out so that he and Meredith can charge inside unhindered.

It's a sound plan and a functional compromise, but unutterably arrogant. Typical Hawke, for that matter.

The leader of the Templars and the leader of the mages seem to agree with Fenris' assessment, and reluctantly agree. Meredith expresses doubts about Orsino's ability, to which the elf smirks.

"Have faith, Knight Commander."

Watching Orsino get the attention of the Qunari is at once beautiful and frightening. The First Enchanter saunters up to the courtyard with a dancer's grace, competently twirling his three-headed staff. And then comes the fire.

Hawke is a powerful mage, but wild. When he conjures fire he conjures it all at once, making it rain from the sky in a shower of small meteors. Orsino is equally powerful, perhaps more powerful, and _controlled_. What Hawke summons as a storm of fire raining down Orsino summons and keeps coiled around his hands until he lets it free, one small splash of arcane might at a time. The first of five Qunari guards at the door gets incinerated where he stands, dropping as a pile of ashes. The rest charge.

Fenris follows Hawke and Meredith up to the now-vacated front door of the keep with the thought that Orsino could have been a magister, if not for the point of his ears. He's certainly strong enough to hold his own.

Makes Danarius look like an incompetent child, and Fenris doesn't know if that thought is comforting or terrifying.

The keep is deathly quiet for the first few rooms. Orsino has done his job well; the way is unguarded. Unfortunately the lack of combat gives Fenris time to stew in his worry. Anders is okay, he tells himself, because mages are like that. You just can't get rid of them no matter how hard you try.

The Arishok is waiting for Hawke in the audience chamber. The Viscount's disembodied head is on the floor, crown rolling away by itself. Cold marble floor, slick with blood. White marble walls, spattered with blood. Everything is bloody. Corpses are piled everywhere. Including the Qunari honor guard that attacks them at their leader's command.

Where is Anders? Is he hurt? Is he…no, no, Fenris won't think of anything worse than hurt.

Somewhere between entering the keep and now, Meredith had broken from their pack to rally her Templars. Fenris hadn't noticed. All he can glean from conversation now is that Isabela ran off with the relic. And then she comes in with the bombast of a storm at sea, marching right up to the Arishok and tossing the relic – the Tome of Koslun, if Fenris isn't mistaken – at the Qunari leader's feet.

Fenris would like very much to walk out of the ensuing argument and go look for Anders. Perhaps he could pick up the mage's trail somewhere around the tunnel out of Darktown, find out if Anders was waylaid by further combat or if he's hurt and waiting for someone to find him or…

"You're _not_ taking Isabela. And for all this, you're not even leaving here alive."

An intensely arrogant statement from Hawke – does the man ever say anything humble? – but it gets the Arishok's attention nonetheless. Isabela argues that she should be the one dueling for her freedom. What? Oh, right, the Arishok reserves the right to take Isabela back to the Qunari homeland and force her to submit to the Qun. Fenris can't personally think of any unlikelier candidate for the Qun than Isabela, or perhaps Anders.

It's a duel. Hawke against the Arishok in single combat. No one else from either side is allowed to step in. If Hawke wins, the Arishok dies, and the rest of the Qunari sail away peacefully with their tome. If the Arishok wins, Hawke dies, and the Qunari sail away with their tome and Isabela.

Fenris rather wishes that this arrangement could include him leaving, but he's relegated to the stairs with Varric and Isabela, watching the battle with impatient interest.

Most people, sane people, would be afraid to face down any of the three leaders of the Qun, but the war leader most of all. Perhaps they would wisely scream and run to see the war leader of the Qunari charging them like an enraged bull, horns and weapons first. But Hawke is broken, Fenris realizes, broken and beyond fear at the moment.

It's only been a short while since the grisly death of his mother. And everyone else. That's a lot of grief and a lot of rage and the Arishok is in for a surprise if he thinks that this _bas saarebas _is going to go down easily.

There are two large pillars in the designated fighting 'pit'. Hawke calmly keeps these in between himself and the Arishok. Even now, Fenris expects the man to fall from grace, resort to blood magic. How else could a mage defeat the most powerful warrior of the Qunari people?

But Hawke proves steadfast, at least for the moment. Instead of playing with blood, he plays with gravity. Again, the air is syrup – though unlike the lyrium smugglers, who were slowed to a standstill, the Arishok is merely slowed to a jog instead of a full sprint. He also proves immune to the rest of Hawke's force magic, neither pulled into the gravitational abyss nor thrown into the ceiling.

Frustration crosses the man's features as he resorts, instead, to basic magic, the primal elemental forces of destruction that he channels as easily as breathing. Fire and lightning rage from the sky. Ice attempts to slow the Arishok down.

He slips up once, and the Arishok impales him on a sword larger even than the greatsword Fenris is never seen without. Garrett is skewered like an insect, and the Arishok lifts him off the ground, waving him in the air on the sword, like a trophy. Hawke sends a jolt of lightning down the blade to force the Arishok to drop him.

Blood is everywhere, most of it Garrett's own. Surely, this will be the moment he does it, reaches for the latent power that is _right there_.

Hawke blocks the Arishok's progress with a wall of ice and takes a moment to down a healing draught. There isn't much of him left, but he's not done yet.

More fire, more lightning, more ice, even more force magic, even though the latter proves inefficient at best. Eventually the Arishok collapses back against the stairs with a rattling gurgle that Fenris can't understand, but apparently Hawke hears and understands.

Meredith and Orsino burst in, ready to do combat with the Qunari. They are minutes too late. The Arishok is dead. The rest of them peacefully leave the keep. The seneschal declares Garrett Hawke to be the Champion of Kirkwall.

Hawke is on his knees by the corpse of the Arishok, clutching the gaping hole in his gut.

The mage looks around. "So. He _still_ can't be bothered to show up."

"I misplaced him in Lowtown. It was his idea to come look for you."

"Coward probably ran away. It's what he's good at, isn't it? Running away? Ran away from the Circle, ran away from the Wardens, now he's run away from this…"

Fenris knows he should give Hawke a little slack. It's hard to be reasonable with a large gash in one's belly – Fenris knows this from experience – but Hawke has been so infuriating lately. The lyrium in the elf's skin begins to glow without cognitive input from him, and he steps forward.

Varric hauls him backwards literally by the seat of his pants. "Broody! I'm worried about Blondie too, but let's get Hawke out of here in one piece, alright? Then we'll go see about finding a trail."

Aveline is nearby. Fenris thinks she came in with Meredith and Orsino but he can't say for certain. She perks up with curious interest. "Anders is missing?"

"I'm telling you, he's a coward and he ran away," Hawke groans. If the mage weren't bleeding so profusely Fenris would kick him.

"We were on our way here from Darktown. I lost track of him while I was fighting."

Aveline looks from Fenris, to Varric, to Hawke. "Go," she says at last. "You look for Anders. I'll see to it Hawke gets home safely."

"You're a peach, Aveline," Varric tells her with false cheer. "Come on, Broody. Let's see if we can't find Blondie in all that mess."

* * *

><p>Markelius wipes the blood from his brow and smiles at the bound, struggling mage in his cart. Finally, it is time.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Well, shit. I keep trying to make my chapters shorter and they keep growing. Also, I may never write in Fenris' POV again. He's difficult and doesn't go well with my particular narrative style.<strong>

**I told 1879 not to cheat about guessing my self-insert last chapter. She didn't need to. Nobody took me up on the challenge anyway. The answer? Moira/Mark. The frustrated transgender that no one's taking very seriously. Except Anders – such a crusader for personal freedom has got to have more respect for someone like "Mark". Points and cookies both go to 1879. By the way, darlin', thanks for catching my idiot spelling errors. I appreciate it!**

**Bright side? I'm finally about to get to the actual prompt! It's only been, what, 1 + 7 + 10 + 13… 31 pages so far?**

**I would also like to apologize to Anders in advance. He's really not going to like the next chapter(s).**

**As ever, thanks all for sticking with me and feel free to speak up if you think I've completely borked something...other than the pacing. I know it's rushed. I was trying to make it shorter...**


	5. Summit of the Lost

Menagerie: Chapter Four – Summit of the Lost

Markelius hates Tevinter, and the ruined remains of the Imperium in the rest of the world even more. His native land aside, nothing of Tevinter is ever clean, ever neat, ever sanitary. The magisters wield blood magic as if the art is meant for _fun_, and slavery…it is atrocity after atrocity in the Imperium.

Old slaver warrens along the Wounded Coast are hardly ideal, but it's the space he needs for his research. Although the distance from Kirkwall is one of its strong points for him, it's also a drawback. Traveling back and forth and back and forth constantly is exhausting. And it means, with his commute time, that his patients are alone far longer than they ought to be.

Not all alone, perhaps. Aurelia is so proud of being a Big Girl now, helping Markelius by bringing food and fresh water to the patients. Not too close to them; the patients are likely scared and hurting, results of their conditions and the restoration work Markelius has been doing for them – likely to lash out, even at a child. But she's excited that she can help him now. And that makes Markelius smile.

No father has ever been prouder than Markelius is of Aurelia.

He will probably have to keep her clear of the new patient, however. He spares a glance at the mage trussed up in the little wooden cart as they trundle along a path from Kirkwall out to the old warrens. The mage glares venomously back, blue light rippling through his eyes, his skin.

Interesting. Markelius had known, of course, that the man was a mage. A healer even, and healers occasionally prove unpredictable. What Markelius had not expected when he put the rag over the man's face was for the man to throw an elbow back into Markelius' face and smash his nose.

Ordinarily, people who breathe the fumes from the rag drop unconscious and are then easily controlled. Perhaps a healer might have a little more resistance to the fumes, but still, even a healer should drop – insensible if not unconscious. But the blond mage is not only a healer, he's an _abomination_.

And startlingly adept at hand-to-hand combat. Too long near Tevinter. Markelius has missed going up against mages who are not so skeletal and soft. He had almost forgotten, actually, that a mage can be a physical person and not just an insubstantial wisp capable of devastating magic.

And this one? Darktown healer, career apostate, Grey Warden. Markelius should have expected a struggle, in retrospect. He should have expected more of a fight when he discovered the spirit inhabiting the mage.

But Markelius has never tried to subdue an abomination before. Now, at least, he has a reference. The vapors don't work; try something else.

Even now, he ought to be having more trouble. Even tied up and gagged, the other mage should prove much more difficult to transport. Unless, of course, he's humoring Markelius just to find out where they're going. Actually, that sounds exactly like what is happening. Markelius shifts in the driver's seat of the cart, clenching bruised hands around the reins.

His pony, at least, doesn't seem to give a damn about the entire situation.

Markelius smiles at his new patient despite being in absolutely no mood to smile. Breathing hurts. That would be one actually broken rib, three others merely cracked. All that along with a sprained wrist, mild concussion, and all of the various bumps, bruises, and scrapes the other mage inflicted during their scuffle in the tunnels between Darktown and Lowtown. And, of course, a few stab wounds.

It is at least vaguely humiliating to have been stabbed three times with his own knife.

He's gotten soft, Markelius reflects, too soft to go about taking on a Grey Warden with inadequate planning like that. Definitely not again. Never again.

Perhaps he should have gone for the beardless dwarf or the Tevinter elf. But, no, no. Dwarves are regrettably resistant to magic and the Tevinter elf has already had one too many traumatic procedures performed on him.

Besides, neither of them _stands_ for anything.

It had to be this mage. It _has_ to be this mage.

The pony draws the cart up to the old warrens that Markelius has set up shop in, and Markelius, with difficulty, gets out of the cart to remove the tack from his pony and let the ragged little creature roll around in the sand to scratch all the itchy places before wandering off to find a patch of grass. There's fresh water nearby, too. The pony, lazy little beast, is fairly self-sufficient and never wanders off.

Perfect, really. Now if only humans could be that reliable, life would be much improved.

He struggles back to the cart to unload his passenger. The other mage acquiesces until a point, just inside the tunnel that leads into the warrens, when he suddenly throws his weight sideways into Markelius and stomps down on Markelius' foot. White starbursts explode in Markelius' vision to the sound of his foot crunching loudly, bones sundering under pressure.

There's an elbow buried sharply in his broken rib despite the other mage's hands being securely tied behind his back. Markelius had once thought himself well acquainted with physical pain. He is discovering now that he never quite knew what pain was. It's as fascinating as it is annoying.

With distaste, Markelius presses a hand into one of the holes in his robe, in his person, where blood still oozes thickly from the three stab wounds. There are familiar whispers at the back of his head when he draws the blood into his hand. Whispers he impatiently ignores. He has no _time_ for demons and their idiot games.

The mage needs to be subdued again.

Mind control doesn't particularly work, at least, not the very minor derivative Markelius has learned. Perhaps a maleficar less concerned with the ethics of it might have an easier time, spirit possession or no, but mind control feels like the worst kind of rape to Markelius and he refuses to learn more than _suggestion_. Suggestions can be ignored. In the case of a possessed healer, suggestions can be quite easily ignored.

However, wrapping tendrils of blood around the other mage's elbows, ankles, and neck, he can drag the man along the corridor without further difficulty. It is a displeasing solution to the problem, but Markelius' patience and usual grasp of ethics are both numb at the moment, broadly eclipsed by the amount of pain this mage has put him in.

The other mage struggles, the spirit within him struggles, but they never quite struggle _together_ enough to break free, and Markelius drags them both down several more corridors and into the prison.

A bleak place, depressing, hallways walled by cells. Markelius has done what he can to make the place more viable. He's scrubbed every inch of it clean. The beds are dressed with clean linens. The occupied cells even have rugs to keep the occupants off of the cold stone floor.

His little touches of home and comfort look absolutely absurd. His ancestors never intended for this place to be comfortable. Actually, with its imposing architecture and chronic shadow infestation, the place is _meant_ to be terrifying, to keep slaves cowed and pliant in their fear.

He drags his new guest to an unoccupied cell that has been prepared for him, propels him inside, and slams the cell door before releasing the blood magic puppet-strings, dragging the gag and rope restraints along as well.

A blast of raw mana comes flying at Markelius, and is absorbed into the bars of the cell.

"Tevinter has a long history of favoring mages as slaves," Markelius murmurs, wheezing just a little, folding the mess of rope and cloth in his bruised, bleeding hands. "Distasteful history, but the cell has its uses, I suppose. I suggest you make yourself as comfortable as this dreary place allows. We shall speak later."

Markelius limps away, crushed foot crunching audibly with every step.

* * *

><p>Of all the things Anders expected to happen to him today, getting kidnapped by a blood mage and thrown into a cell was not on the list. He expected to be murdered by Hawke, or lost in the Qunari attack, or maybe just to hear whatever it was Fenris was going to say before they were interrupted.<p>

But this? Well. Definitely not on his list of expectations.

Anders isn't sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

There's an obscenely cheerful rug under his feet. His staff and feathered coat are missing, likely lost in the scuffle. The scuffle…

For a moment just a brush of his old vanity returns. Oh, but if the others had seen him in action, they wouldn't be treating him like a 'delicate little mage flower' anymore. He'd been successfully kicking the shit out of his assailant until binding blood magic had been brought into play.

But until then, even Fenris might have been proud of him.

Fenris…

The elf is quite capable of taking care of himself, but Anders still worries. The city had been burning when he disappeared, Fenris charging headlong into the Qunari and their allies. Have the Qunari won? Have they been beaten back? Andraste's flaming knickers, what's happening?

More importantly, is Fenris still alive?

Anders lets out a frustrated yell, throwing himself against the cell door. It should hurt, but he's been much more indestructible since Justice. He doesn't even bruise when he bounces off the bars.

Justice is stewing. _Brooding_ even, marinating in a heady, nauseating blend of shame, rage, guilt, and other, more minor irritations. Much more of this and he'll give Anders an ulcer, not that a stomach ulcer ranks very high on their collective list of worries at the moment.

What ranks higher is the cell they're trapped in, oh, and the taste of human blood in Anders' mouth. At least the fresh blood is intentional. Their captor should find the bite mark eventually. But Ser Alrik? No, as much as it lifts Anders' spirits to know that the abusive Templar is thoroughly dead…ripping out his throat was not how Anders meant to kill him.

Justice stirs in the back of Anders' mind, inquisitive, but ashamed of his question. This is not a normal combat tactic for mortals? Their old comrade Cousland seemed rather fond of it, in Amaranthine.

Cousland's part werewolf, Anders thinks tiredly. Of course it's normal for _him_ to go biting people's throats out. Anders isn't. Not a werewolf, not even by a fraction, and certainly not fond of the taste of human blood.

At least, when the strange high of mid-combat dies down and he feels like himself again. This affinity for the taste of blood is something Justice needs to be more aware of and less…enthusiastic about.

They don't want to be the textbook image of an abomination. What they are is bad enough. They don't need to make it worse.

Anders catches himself thinking in the first-person plural and yells again, throwing himself at the door a few more times. It's futile, but ultimately harmless, a way to vent his frustration and keep himself relatively calm. If he's throwing himself against the door, he's _doing_ something instead of curling up into a ball and panicking.

He's fading in and out of solitary in the cells of Kinloch Hold before a semi-familiar pair of reflective green eyes flashes at him from the charcoal darkness of the prison.

_Mr. Wiggums? No, no, Wiggums is dead. Pounce…is living with Delilah Howe in Amaranthine. Get a hold on yourself, idiot._

The eyes float closer, body invisible in the shadows, the eyes too high up to be a cat's. But that can't be right. Those are distinctly a cat's eyes.

Closer still and the rest of the body the eyes are attached to gets clearer. At first Anders can't tell if it's an animal or a child. A child materializes eventually, when she gets close enough for him to see. A little girl, maybe four or five years old. She has golden hair, skin just a few shades tanner than pale, huge, cat-slit pale green eyes. Instead of human ears, hers are pointed shells, furry, cat-like. A feline tail twists and switches behind her, and patches of orange fur cover her face – a triangular patch down from her hairline, over her forehead, two more patches just under her cheekbones, outlining her face.

She even has whiskers protruding from her eyebrows. None from her upper lip, though, so not a full set.

"Uh, hi?" Anders blurts after she stares at him for a few minutes, standing just on the other side of the bars of his cell. "What's your name?"

She tilts her head, regarding him with curiosity and what might or might not be suspicion.

"My name's Anders," he continues. "Or, well, not really _Anders_ – that's where I'm from, not really who I am, you know – but it's what people call me. Honestly I'm not sure if I remember my real name…"

**You babble.**

_Thanks, Justice, I realized that. It's not every day I see a child who's half cat, though._

She giggles. "Aurelia," she answers. It takes Anders a moment to realize she's speaking of her own name. "_Pater_ said he had a new pay-shunt. You're silly."

_Andraste's flaming knickers, he did that to his own daughter? Sick…__**UNJUST!**_

Justice finishes Anders' thought and for once the mage doesn't stop him. He tries to stop the conflict from showing on his face, though. He rather wants to tear the girl's father into tiny bloody chunks, but that's no reason to terrify her further.

Except that she doesn't look particularly terrified to begin with. She holds up a bucket, sized for a small child to hold, and brings it closer to the bars for him to take. The bucket, about the size of a tankard, is full of water.

"I help _pater_ with his pay-shunts. I'mma good helper. _Pater_ says that people are flowers. Have water, don't wilt!"

Some part of Anders wants to laugh, despite everything. Aurelia is really rather cute. Perhaps her father meant to say people are _like_ flowers? It's a decent analogy for explaining the basics of hydration to a child, Anders has to admit. Even if the child in question misses a few words and comes up with an entirely different conclusion.

And he's always been a sucker for cats.

He just doesn't want to think about how Aurelia came to be half cat or what happened to the cat whose parts she's wearing.

Anders reaches through the bars and takes the bucket-tankard the girl offers him, raising it in a toast. "My thanks, lady Aurelia."

She giggles. Anders doesn't care by now if she's giving him poison; he drinks, the cool water soothing the raw dryness of having been gagged. Surprisingly, the water is not only delightfully cool, but sweet, clean, pure. He'd like to gulp it all at once, but he knows better, and sips instead. He wouldn't be much of a healer if he couldn't prevent _himself_ from getting sick, now would he?

Aurelia chats happily while Anders sips the water, telling him all sorts of things that randomly float through her head. Anders learns that Aurelia's favorite color is blue – she can't see red at all – and that the fireflies are really very pretty here, and that there are monsters under her bed but she's not afraid now because she has claws. _Pater_ brings a lot of sick people here but he makes them all better, like her. Once upon a time she falled down stairs and got hurt and _pater_ made her all better.

It's in the middle of this story that Anders hands back the empty tankard-bucket and his captor, Aurelia's father, melts out of the shadows.

"Aurelia, darling, why don't you go play? I would like to speak with our new patient."

"Okay!" Aurelia scampers off with her tiny bucket. Anders feels a little sad to see her go. She's a bright little thing, all cheer and a child's innocent love of the world and everyone in it.

And now he's alone with the blood mage.

"You mutilated your own daughter," Anders begins conversationally. Justice seethes under his surface, angry but nervous. The last time Justice tried to do anything, they very nearly murdered an innocent mage girl.

"You should know more of that before you judge," the man reprimands quietly. He sounds less wheezy. Maybe he's done something to patch up some of the damage Anders did to him earlier. Not that even magic will fix all of it, but enough to make breathing easier, perhaps. "I admit, I was nervous about letting my daughter come to see you. You and your…passenger made quite the display in the smuggler tunnels."

Close enough now for Anders to see him clearly, the man has long black hair, down to the middle of his back, secured in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Something about the man's complexion and bone structure remind Anders of Fenris. This mage is a few shades paler, though, and his eyes are grey.

His daughter's name, though, is Tevinter in origin – as if Anders needs another hint.

"So. Perfect. I've been stalked by a _magister_."

The slap of the man's battered hands against the bars is a surprising display of violence from a mage who has heretofore been surprisingly demure.

"Do not. Call me. A magister," he snarls, voice going softer – a semi-sibilant whisper of unadulterated _rage_. And then, just as suddenly, the storm clears and a bit of humor shines through. "I work for a living."

"Right. You work for a living kidnapping people from Darktown for…what? Tea and cake? A knitting circle? Vicious blood rituals?"

The mage almost laughs at Anders' snark, a subdued chuckle that gets choked off in a gasp of pain. So, the ribs are still cracked. A thrill of perverse pleasure snakes through Anders. Not typically a sadist, also, a healer, Anders isn't the kind of person who enjoys seeing people suffer. Except this mage has really, _really_ earned the suffering.

"Ah. You've noticed my presence then. Then you should also realize I have only taken those who are fatally flawed."

"Not Mark. He's in, well, not _perfect_ health, but he's not…"

"Not fatally malformed? How long do you think he can exist in a woman's form before he drowns? Or worse, before the Coterie decides to stop ignoring him? No, no, _you_ are the only guest here without a deadly malformation. Although, I did think you might want to see. The disappearances must have alarmed your nightly headcount."

_He hasn't just been watching me, he's been __watching__ me. Better yet, he thinks he's fixing people. Oh, shit, what have I been dragged into?_

**Enough. Panic serves no purpose.**

The blood mage holds up a hand, light spilling forth from his palm. Ball-sized spheres of light fly up halfway to the ceiling, bobbing down the halls of cells in every line of sight that Anders has. Inside of some of the cells, he can see the people who have gone missing from Darktown.

They've all been altered. Like Aurelia, and not – no two that Anders can see are stitched to the same kind of animal.

**INJUSTICE!**

_I-__**WE**__ will have __**YOUR HEAD FOR THIS!**_

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Yeah. So, this took longer than I thought it would. Markelius and Aurelia fought me pretty hard. Didn't want to cooperate. Neither did Anders. I think he's just figured out what's coming.<strong>

**Sorry about such a long wait for such a sub-standard chapter. Just in case I didn't add an AU tag, well, here it is. People can't be combined with animals in canon. I must admit inspiration from the Full Metal Alchemist series – if anyone dropping by is an anime fan. The chimera projects? Gave me ideas. And then came Markelius.**

**Funny confession. I don't really ship Fenders much. I don't _not_ ship them either – this is fanfiction and if it's well-written I like it and if it isn't I don't read it and in a fan-world, anything can happen - and that's not mentioning the truly captivating fan_art_ out there, much of which inspired this at least a little. But I saw this awesome prompt on the kinkmeme and Markelius just stepped on my foot and demanded I write the story. So, Menagerie. Also, the title finally makes sense, no? Anyway, I just needed to get my chapter-ly rambling in there somewhere. Thank you all who have stuck with me despite my slow-ass updating speed!**

**And thank you 1879 – for being my editor and catching me when I bork things. I do love you, you know. If that isn't completely creepy to say! XD**


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